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CONTENTS 



PAGE 

I. Statutes and Songs ... 7 

II. "The Night is Far Spent" . . 24 

III. "It is the Lord" . . . .40 

IV. Our Gentle Schoolmistress . . 54 
V. The Gospel Mold . . . . 69 

VI. Scriptures and Power . . .84 

VII. Stilled and Quieted . . • 97 

VIII. A New Covenant . . . . n4 

IX. Christ and Pain . . . . 131 

X. Good for a Time .... 144 



CHEER FOR LIFE'S PILGRIM- 
AGE 



STATUTES AND SONGS 

Psalm cxix. 54 

The Jews have never forgotten that 
they are the descendants of a pilgrim 
race. From the day that their great 
forefather crossed the Euphrates, and 
became the Hebrew, to the present, 
they have been the nation of the wan- 
dering foot, found in every land, but at 
home in none. 

7 



8 CHEER FOR LIFE'S PILGRIMAGE 

Their literature is dyed with this con- 
ception. It abounds with the confession 
that they are strangers and sojourners 
upon earth. Abraham made it when he 
stood up from before his dead, and pur- 
chased the cave of Machpelah from the 
sons of Heth. Jacob made it when he 
stood in the presence of Pharaoh and of 
the solid memorials of Egyptian great- 
ness. Hezekiah made it when he com- 
pared his life to a shepherd's tent. The 
author of the Epistle to the Hebrews 
made it when he alleged that the con- 
tinuing city was yet to come. It is 
made here : " Thy statutes have been my 
songs in the house of my pilgrimage. ,, 

But these plaintive confessions are 
not confined to Jews; they are the 
heritage of all nations. Few things in 
our language are more touching than the 
comparison made by the Northumbrian 



STATUTES AND SONGS 9 

chieftain, on the eve of the introduction 
of Christianity, between man's life and 
the flight of a sparrow through a lighted 
hall, coming out of the darkness and 
storm, and after a brief flight going forth 
into it again. Under this head, what 
more suggestive than Chaucer's " Can- 
terbury Tales," told in an inn! 

Earth is but a camping-ground, on 
which we halt for a little on our journey 
forward into the great eternity which 
awaits us. Other generations have been 
here before us, and have gone, we know 
not whither ; but they are marching on- 
ward and forward somewhere, and we 
must follow them, as others us. Indeed, 
our world has been compared to the site 
of a Gipsy encampment, where the gray 
ash, broken pottery, and fluttering rags 
tell of previous caravans that made it 
their halting-place for a few nights, and 



10 CHEER FOR LIFE'S PILGRIMAGE 

then yoked in the lank steeds and went 
on to other camping-grounds. The 
merry-go-rounds will stop, the oillamps 
cease to flare, the fair will be done, and 
we shall be away with the daybreak. 

These things need to be repeated ; we 
are so apt to forget. The mere fact of 
returning night after night to our homes 
and beds makes us think that they are 
permanent abiding-places, when, in point 
of fact, we never come back to them 
where we left them. During our ab- 
sence at the mill or the school they have 
been moved farther along the road we 
are traveling, as Arabs move forward 
the tents of European tourists in Pales- 
tine, so that they are awaiting them for 
the evening meal. Our homes are tents, 
always moving forward, because we are 
ever on the march toward our eternal 
abode. 



STATUTES AND SONGS 11 

We are exiles beside the river of time, 
as Israel was in Babylon, and we mingle 
our tears with its waters as we reflect 
on the brevity and transience of our 
days. 

The house of our pilgrimage. 
What can this be but our mortal body ? 
" The Word was made flesh, and taber- 
nacled among us ";"1 must put off this 
my tabernacle " ; " When the earthly 
house of this tabernacle is broken up, we 
have a building of God, a house not 
made with hands, eternal in the heavens." 
It has been truly said that we are not 
flesh and blood, but are made partakers 
of flesh and blood. Each one of us is 
an immortal spirit, created in the like- 
ness of God, and for a little while brought 
under the conditions of mortality as 
an education for our eternal condition. 
During our brief sojourn here we reside 



12 CHEER FOR LIFE'S PILGRIMAGE 

in the body as our tent. It is the house 
of our pilgrimage. 

The tent is frail. "The veil, that is 
to say, His flesh/' Only a veil hangs 
between us and the great constellations 
of eternity, between us and the world of 
realities, between us and the face of God. 
A breath may wave it, an insect's sting 
may pierce it, a thorn may rend it. 

The tent is not always perfect to begin 
with. Some of us start on our pilgrim- 
age with a crazy house, which is always 
in need of attention and repair. Life is 
much more difficult under such condi- 
tions. Paul's thorn in the flesh made it 
less likely that he could achieve as much 
as other men ; it was by God's grace that 
he actually achieved more. All honor 
to the men who have triumphed over 
the limitations and deficiencies of their 
physical environment, and have become 



STATUTES AND SONGS 13 

more than conquerors through Him who 
loved them. We are all proud of a 
former Postmaster- General, who, not- 
withstanding his blindness, was able to 
reach and hold with credit one of the 
highest positions in the land. 

The tent has a limited durability. It 
is not intended to last for more than 
eighty or ninety years at the utmost. 
Its average duration is much less than 
this. With all our efforts for its repair, 
it inevitably wears out at last. But how 
important to distinguish between tent 
and tenant ! The one material and tem- 
porary ; the other spiritual and immor- 
tal. When you come upon a wrecked 
signal-box, a ruined house, you know 
that the inmate has moved on. He is 
living somewhere. This is only the place 
where he lived and wrought — the lab- 
oratory of the chemist, the forge of the 



14 CHEER FOR LIFE'S PILGRIMAGE 

eager worker, the observatory of the 
heaven-soaring thinker. So, when the 
body is all that is left you of the dear 
one in whose company you were accus- 
tomed to make pilgrimage, treat it rev- 
erently and lovingly, but remember it is 
the worn-out tent of the spirit, which is 
clothed upon with its new house, which 
is from heaven. 

My songs. " Songs in the house of 
my pilgrimage.' ' 

This is startling. 

The pilgrim's lot is so changeful. No 
sooner has he become settled than he 
must be gone. The enchanting prospect, 
the sweet beauty of nature in her loveli- 
est dress, the tender love of friends, the 
delicious sense of repose — all must be 
abandoned when the bugle sounds the 
reveille. So fair is the site that one 
would fain linger, but there is no alter- 



STATUTES AND SONGS 15 

native than to strike the tent and follow. 
See, the pillar of cloud is already on its 
way, moving in stately march over the 
desert sand ! Is it possible to sing, when 
such partings and settings forth and 
farewells are ever our lot? The weak 
heart clings to the past, dreads the un- 
known — can it sing? 

The pilgrim's life is so perilous. Take 
the experiences of an explorer. The 
fruits he plucks on the unknown soil 
may poison him ; the flowers may narco- 
tize him with their scent ; miasma may 
lurk amid the most bewitching scenery ; 
the waters of certain streams may be 
unfit to drink. He does not know the 
native customs, and at any time may 
involve himself, most innocently, in their 
undying hatred. Every day leads him 
through strange and difficult circum- 
stances; every night is spent at a new 



16 CHEER FOR LIFE'S PILGRIMAGE 

resting-place. Amid so much that is 
trying and perplexing, is it possible for 
the heart to sing ? Yet this is what the 
psalmist says : " Thy statutes have been 
my songs in the house of my pilgrimage. ,, 

Thy statutes. A clue to the song 
will perhaps be forthcoming when we 
inquire more closely into the nature of 
God's statutes. What are they? A 
statute is something which is established, 
fixed, permanent. God's statutes are 
what He has laid down as the founda- 
tions of His dealings with men, and 
which are more lasting than the ever- 
lasting hills. 

This wonderful acrostic psalm, which 
weaves into its texture the letters of the 
Hebrew alphabet, abounds in references 
to the divine statutes. Seven times 
over the psalmist utters the prayer, 
u Teach me Thy statutes," and toward 



STATUTES AND SONGS 17 

the close of the psalm he rejoices in the 
assurance that God has answered his cry 
and become his Instructor. There are 
seven other references to the divine 
statutes, on which we have now no space 
to dwell at length, though each is full 
of instruction and inspiration. 

God's statutes may probably be com- 
prehended in three classes : 

His promises. 

His procedure, i.e., the method of His 
government. 

See how songful each of these is to 
the loving and obedient heart, though 
only to such. 

His precepts yield song. Shakespeare 
says that music is " the consent of sweet 
sounds." But it is more, just as poetry 
consists of something more than harmo- 
nious words. Music is the language of 
the unseen and eternal, and song is the 



18 CHEER FOR LIFE'S PILGRIMAGE 

accord of the heart with this the utter- 
ance of eternity. Of course there are 
evil songs, which show that the heart 
of the singer is in accord with the dark 
nether world of evil ; but good and holy 
songs show that the heart of the singer 
has caught the strains and chords of the 
bright, blessed world of God and the 
holy angels. 

But how should we know the thoughts 
and principles of the unseen and eternal 
world, if it were not for the divine pre- 
cepts? God has set them up on earth, 
that we might know, through them, the 
order of the divine realm, and might, by 
obedience, bring ourselves into accord 
with it. Take, then, the precepts of the 
Bible, especially those given by our 
Lord — His reiterated commands to love, 
to pray, to sacrifice self. Embody them 
in every act of the life and every pulse 



STATUTES AND SONGS 19 

of thought ; learn them, obey them, fol- 
low them ; and when the life is married 
to them, as noble music to noble words, 
there will come a new gladness into the 
heart and a new song in the life. What 
rapture there is in obedience! What 
comfort and joy in the Holy Ghost! 
What songfulness in having a conscience 
void of offense toward God and man! 
Thus God's precepts become our songs 
in the house of our pilgrimage. 

His promises are conducive to song. 
Is the pilgrim life so changeful ? Lis- 
ten to His promise that He will abide 
the same, even to hoar hairs and forever. 
Is it so perilous? Remember, He has 
promised to go before to prepare the 
path, and to follow after as our rearward. 
Is it so lonely ? Have lover and friend 
stood aside? Have the companions of 
early years dropped away ? Are all the 



20 CHEER FOR LIFE'S PILGRIMAGE 

faces growing strange and unfamiliar? 
Still, recall His promise that He will 
never leave, neither forsake. 

Let us con the promises, remember- 
ing that they are ordered in all things 
and sure, that they touch every possi- 
ble phase of life, that they are the bank- 
notes of heaven, each bearing the signa- 
ture of the Almighty, that they are yea 
and amen in Christ ; and as we meditate 
and pray there will be a sense of secu- 
rity and wealth breathed into us, which 
will awaken songs. God's promises will 
become songs in the house of our pil- 
grimage. 

The order of the divine procedure and 
government is also provocative of song. 

The world around is full of the at- 
tempts and triumphs of high-handed 
wrong. Pride and will- worship, the lust 
of the flesh and of the eyes, the down- 



STATUTES AND SONGS 21 

treading of the weak by the strong, the 
spoiling of the defenseless by the arro- 
gant oppressor, the apparent success of 
those that set at naught God's law — 
these facts are patent to us all. They 
accost us in every street and flaunt 
themselves before our eyes. And the 
waters of a full cup are wrung out to us 
as we cry, with one of old, " Why do 
the wicked prosper ?" 

But when we turn our thoughts hea- 
venward we are arrested by the order, 
regularity, prevalence, of God's statutes 
— this, that light is stronger than dark- 
ness, and Christ than Satan; this, that 
holiness and purity mean always and 
everywhere blessedness ; this, that false- 
hood and wrong- doing carry with them- 
selves the seeds of disintegration and 
decay ; this, that those who love their 
lives lose them, while to those who seek 



22 CHEER FOR LIFE'S PILGRIMAGE 

first the kingdom of God all else is 
added. 

And as we consider the certainty that 
ultimately God will justify Himself be- 
fore the eyes of the universe and estab- 
lish righteousness and justice, vindicating 
the oppressed and punishing the wrong- 
doer, we seem to be standing on the sea 
of glass, having the harps of God, and 
singingthesongof the redeemed : " Great 
and marvelous are Thy works; . . . 
just and true are Thy ways, Thou King 
of saints." Thus the order and pro- 
cedure of the divine government may 
become our songs in the house of our 
pilgrimage. 

And if our songs be so heaven-soar- 
ing and glad when we are yet in the 
shifting tent, surrounded by much that, 
as the psalmist says in the previous 
verse, is calculated to fill us with horror, 



STATUTES AND SONGS 23 

what will they not be when we draw 
near our home, our true abiding-place, 
our city with its foundations ; nay, what 
will they not be when we have crossed 
the threshold, and are mingling with the 
innumerable company of angels and with 
the spirits of the perfected saints! If 
there are festal days when the pilgrims 
meet in the inn on the way to their home, 
what will not the overflowing gladness 
be when they are at home forever! 

" Free from a world of death and sin, 
With God eternally shut in." 



II 



"THE NIGHT IS FAR SPENT, 
THE DAY IS AT HAND" 

Romans xiii. n-14 

To this passage Augustine attributed 
his entire conversion and emancipation. 
" Behold," he says, " I heard a voice 
from a neighboring house, as a boy or 
a girl, I knew not whether, saying in a 
singing note, and often repeating, ' Tolle 
lege, tolle lege (Take up and read).' 
Whereupon, the course of my tears 
being suppressed, I got up, interpreting 
it to be nothing less than a divine ad- 

24 



"THE NIGHT IS FAR SPENT" 25 

monition that I should open the book 
and read the place I first lit upon. 
Therefore I returned in haste to the 
place where I had laid down the book 
of the apostle when I arose from thence. 
I caught it up, opened it, and read in 
silence the place on which I first cast 
mine eyes : ' Not in revelings and 
drunkenness, not in chamberings and 
impurities, not in strifes and envies. 
But put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ, 
and make not provision for the flesh in 
its concupiscences/ I would read no 
further, nor was there need. For with 
the end of this sentence, as if a light of 
confidence and security streamed into 
my heart, all the darkness of my former 
hesitation was dispelled/ ' May similar 
effects accrue to each of us! As we 
ponder these words, may light stream 
into our hearts ! 



26 CHEER FOR LIFE'S PILGRIMAGE 

For us, as for Augustine, there is 
always, in the earlier stages of the re- 
ligious life, some perplexity as to the 
method of treating the evil habits which 
have grown with our years and cling to 
us with grim tenacity. Shall we leave 
them behind us in the course of time? 
Will they relax their hold? Is there 
any way of providing for their gratifica- 
tion within fixed and defined limits? 
Is it to be a perpetual struggle between 
us and them, in which sometimes we 
and sometimes they shall conquer? To 
all these questionings a sufficient answer 
is suggested in the aorist tense of the 
apostle, by which he insists on the 
definite, sudden, and entire abandon- 
ment of the works of darkness, and the 
immediate, final, and irrevocable accep- 
tance of the armor of light. It can be 
done, or the Holy Ghost would not en- 



"THE NIGHT IS FAR SPENT 1 ' 27 

join it. Here, now, and before you 
have laid down this book, you may once 
and forever have put away, as concern- 
ing your former manner of life, the old 
man, which waxeth corrupt after deceitful 
lusts, and you may have put on the new 
man, which, after God, hath been created 
in righteousness and holiness of truth. 

The works of darkness are enumer- 
ated in three classes, with two specimens 
in each. First, indulgence in sensual 
acts; secondly, indulgence in unholy 
thought and desire; lastly, indulgence 
in anything which is not perfectly lov- 
ing and lovely. Surely none who read 
these lines are guilty of the sins of licen- 
tiousness or drunkenness; possibly a 
very few may be given to chambering 
and wantonness, harboring thoughts 
and imaginations which corrode and 
corrupt the soul; but many may be 



28 CHEER FOR LIFE'S PILGRIMAGE 

prone to strife and jealousy. You per- 
mit yourselves to enter into the lists, 
contending for the priority, and are 
jealous of those who excel. These 
things are condemned by the love of 
God ; they savor of the darkness of the 
unregenerate heart, and must be put 
away. Even if they have been per- 
mitted as the habit of years, they may 
be cast away as swiftly and entirely as 
the sleeper puts off his night-robe and 
prepares to gird himself for the day's 
duties, engagements, and conflicts. 

The night is far spent. Here the 
comparison of night is used of Christ's 
absence from His church and of the 
brooding darkness which overcasts the 
world. The night is the emblem of 
indolence and lethargy ; and are not the 
majority of men sluggish toward God, 
however keen and alert they are toward 



"THE NIGHT IS FAR SPENT" 29 

the concerns of this world? Night is 
also the time of illusion. Laban imposes 
the blear-eyed Leah on Jacob in the 
darkness. Ugliness and beauty, gold 
and stone, friend and foe, are all one 
when night has drawn her curtains. 
Are not most men mistaking the coun- 
terpart for the real, the false for the 
true? Again, night is pregnant with 
danger, whether to the traveler across 
the morass, or the ship feeling her way 
along a rock-bound coast. Darkness is 
danger. He that walketh in darkness 
knoweth not whither he goeth, because 
darkness has blinded his eyes. For vast 
tracts of time, darkness has covered the 
earth, and gross darkness the people. 
How great the relief, then, to be told 
that the night is far spent and the day 
at hand ! The night of Satan's reign, of 
the power of darkness, of creation's 



30 CHEER FOR LIFE'S PILGRIMAGE 

travail and anguish, of the absence of 
Jesus from His church — it is far spent. 
The day is at hand. In connection 
with the temple ritual, we are told that 
the morning sacrifice had to be offered 
at a point of time between the first 
indications of dawn and actual sunrise ; 
and during the last hours of the night a 
party of Levites, known as watchmen 
for the morning (Ps. cxxx. 6), used to 
take their stand on one of the higher 
pinnacles of the temple, watching for 
the first indications of the approaching 
sun. Meanwhile, at the altar of burnt- 
offering, everything was ready and the 
priests stood waiting. At last the signal 
was given in the words, " The sky is lit 
as far as Hebron," and, immediately that 
cry was raised, the morning sacrifice was 
slain and the daily routine of the tem- 
ple's ritual and worship began. 



"THE NIGHT IS FAR SPENT" 31 

We, too, are on our watch-tower. 
An increasing number of God's people, 
in these last days, are joining the band 
of watchers up yonder, who stand in the 
chill morning air, looking for that blessed 
hope and the glorious appearing of the 
great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ. 
May we not almost say that the day is 
come? Certainly the light has been 
getting brighter and clearer with every 
year. The Jew-hate which is uprooting 
the Hebrew race in countries where 
Jews have for centuries been settled ; the 
willingness of modern Jews to put aside 
their prejudice and to listen eagerly to 
methodical unfoldings of Scripture ; the 
regathering of so many to Palestine, so 
that, in spite of the Sultan's adverse 
edict, some eighty thousand are settled 
there; the agitation of the world over 
the great problems presented by the 



32 CHEER FOR LIFE'S PILGRIMAGE 

condition of eastern Europe — all these 
indications suggest the hope that the 
sky is lit as far as Hebron. 

But, after all, the conception of this 
passage is classical and Roman, borrowed 
from the camp. Through the night the 
soldiery, divested of their armor, have 
abandoned themselves to revelry and 
carouse, and, as the small hours have 
reigned, have sunk into a deep sleep; 
but lo! the ringing bugle-note is an- 
nouncing the herald streaks of dawn, and 
summoning the troops hastily to put off 
the dress and works of darkness, and to 
assume their armor, free from rust and 
stain. " The night is far spent, the day 
is at hand : cast off the works of dark- 
ness, and put on the armor of light." 

Now is salvation nearer than when we 
believed. Not our salvation merely, 
but salvation generally. Jesus is about 



"THE NIGHT IS FAR SPENT" 33 

to appear the second time, without sin, 
unto salvation. The bodies of the saints 
are to be set free from the power of 
death, and raised in the likeness of the 
body of Christ's glory; the creature is 
to be emancipated from the bondage of 
corruption ; the last remains of Satan's 
rule over our world are to be destroyed ; 
the golden ages are to return. From 
the watchers and holy ones the song of 
redemption is yet to ascend : 

" Salvation to our God that sitteth on the throne, 
And unto the Lamb for ever and ever." 

We look back to the hour when we 
first believed. It is a definite moment 
in the vista of the past, but we look for- 
ward to indefinite degrees of light and 
glory. The light shall grow ever to a 
more perfect day; the results of the 
Saviour's death shall become ever more 
appreciated ; the circles of influence that 



34 CHEER FOR LIFE'S PILGRIMAGE 

radiate from His throne shall reach to 
farther limits, and be more than ever 
prolific of blessing to unknown races of 
beings at the uttermost limits of the 
universe. 

Let us walk honestly {becomingly), as 
in the day. It is nothing to us that the 
shadows appear to linger over moor and 
fell; for us at least the day is broken, 
for the day-star has arisen in our hearts, 
and we are called upon to live as chil- 
dren of the light and of the day. Our 
eternity has already begun. We have 
come out of the great tribulation, to rest 
within the silken curtains of God's pa- 
vilion; we have washed our robes and 
made them white in the blood of the 
Lamb; we already walk the streets of 
the New Jerusalem. Only let us day by 
day allow our light to shine. Let us 
live on the level of God's thought for 



"THE NIGHT IS FAR SPENT" 35 

us. Let us walk as in the day, as we 
shall do when the time of the restitution 
of all things has taken place, in those 
blessed halcyon years when the sun 
shall no more go down, or the moon 
withdraw herself, and the Lord shall be 
the everlasting light. But to do this as 
we should, we must put on the armor of 
light. In an earlier epistle the apostle 
had already suggested the thought: let 
us, since we are of the day, be sober, 
putting on the breastplate of faith and 
love, and for a helmet the hope of sal- 
vation. And in a later epistle he care- 
fully enumerates its successive pieces. 
But here he gathers up all into one 
comprehensive phrase, " the armor of 
light." It is just the Lord Jesus Christ. 
Put Him on — His gentleness, meekness, 
and humility ; His purity and truth ; His 
obedience to the will of God, and sensi- 



36 CHEER FOR LIFE'S PILGRIMAGE 

tiveness to every cry of weakness or 
suffering; and what seems soft to the 
flesh will approve itself to be armor of 
proof in the day of battle. None are so 
invincible and stalwart as those who are 
arrayed in the meekness and gentleness 
of Jesus. 

Put on the Loi'd Jesus Christ, Do 
not be content with a negative religion ; 
be positive. Do not only put off; put 
on. Put off by putting on. It is not 
enough to doff the robes of night ; you 
must don the armor of light. Cast 
away the works of the flesh, because 
you have become enamoured of and 
incased in that glistening panoply woven 
out of sunbeams and light. Do not 
only resist impurity; put on Christ as 
your purity. If you put on Christ as 
your purity you will have no difficulty 
in being free of the taint of impurity. 



"THE NIGHT IS FAR SPENT" 37 

Do not simply forbid wrath, anger, 
malice, but assume Christ's heart of 
compassion, His kindness, humility, 
meekness, long-suffering, and forbear- 
ance ; indeed, to cultivate these will 
make those impossible. You need make 
" no provision for the flesh, not expecting 
to sin, not living in perpetual fear of its 
outbreak and solicitations, when once 
you have put on, by faith and in the 
power of the Holy Spirit, the Lord 
Jesus Christ. 

In Jesus there is supply for every 
need, armor against every attack, full- 
ness for every deficiency. Avail your- 
self of Him ; make use of Him ; appro- 
priate His sufficiency; go into every 
day, whatever its anticipated emergen- 
cies, temptations, and perils, as those 
who are incased in the very nature 
and character of Jesus, which they offer 



38 CHEER FOR LIFE'S PILGRIMAGE 

as their answer to every possible de- 
mand. 

Put on the Lordship of Jesus. For 
this cause He died and lived again : 
that He might be Lord of both the dead 
and living. Let His authority be su- 
preme, His will and prompting law. 

Put on the humanity of Jesus. From 
the day when He went back to Nazareth 
and was subject to His parents, to the 
day when He pleaded for His murderers 
on the cross, He presents a lovely ex- 
ample of holy and spotless manhood. 

Put on the anointing of Jesus. He is 
the Christ of God. Never rest till God, 
who anointed Him as Head, has anointed 
you the member of His body, and you 
are a Christian (an anointed one) in deed 
and in truth. 

Then, when the day breaks and the 
shadows flee forever, when the arch- 



"THE NIGHT IS FAR SPENT" 39 

angel trumpet sounds the reveille to 
quick and dead, when the clear light of 
eternity breaks in on this time of illu- 
sion and gloom, we shall meet the day 
without shame or misgiving, and rise 
to the life immortal, through Him who 
liveth and reigneth forevermore in the 
mystery of the perfect day. 



Ill 

"IT IS THE LORD" 

John xxi. 

JOHN discerned Him first, as it was 
meet. To others it was a stranger that 
paced the sand and looked across the 
steel-gray water. To him who loved, 
and knew that he was loved, there was 
something in the gesture, inquiry, and 
tone which unmistakably indicated the 
presence of Jesus. A quick remark, in 
whispered undertones, to Peter was 
enough to cast him headlong into the 
water, and in a few moments, with rapid 
40 



11 IT IS THE LORD" 41 

stroke, the strong swimmer was making 
for the Master's feet. The man of love 
discerned; the man of action pressed 
through the intervening space to be the 
first to gather the spoil of that unex- 
pected interview. 

Be always on the outlook, fellow-dis- 
ciple, for thy Lord, especially in the 
early morning, when the world is fresh 
and the breeze curls the wavelets as 
they break in musical ripple on the sand. 
Ere the sun is risen above the hills, and 
while shadows lie dark and far on shore 
and sea, thou wilt probably find the 
Master taking pleasure in the works of 
His hands. There, where the foot of the 
roisterer and dissolute cannot intrude, 
where the voices of the world's dissipa- 
tion are unheard, while the pulses are 
unstirred by the fever of the world's 
passion, and the atmosphere of the soul 



42 CHEER FOR LIFE'S PILGRIMAGE 

is untainted by the soil of the world's 
sin, at early dawn, amid nature, among 
the mountains, on the silver line of sand, 
in the woodland brake, in the garden, 
thou shalt hear the voice of thine heart 
saying, "It is the Lord." Thou wilt 
know Him by the fragrance of His 
breath, by the considerateness of His 
care, by His pity as of a father to his 
children, by His knowledge of mysteries 
hidden from all else ; and when thou 
knowest Him to be present, gird thy 
coat about thee in the modesty of true 
humbleness, plunge through the divid- 
ing waves, and never rest till thou hast 
found thy way to His feet. 

It is wonderful what Jesus is to those 
that meet Him thus. They may be tired 
with the night-watch, weary with their 
run of ill success, out of heart and hope ; 
but they never approach Him without 



"IT IS THE IORD" 43 

finding a fire kindled by His hand, the 
fish and bread of prepared provision, 
and a welcome to breakfast. Never let 
that chance of the morning interview 
pass unimproved; never let Him stand 
there in vain; never let love descry 
Him without the strength of a mighty 
purpose bearing thee to His embrace. 

And it is not only thus that thou 
shouldst meet Him. It may be that 
thou shalt be plying thy daily toil, tear- 
ing thyself from work thou hadst 
deemed more sacred ; thou mayest have 
turned to the bench or store, saying, 
with Peter, " I go a-fishing." The 
night may have settled upon thee, of 
disappointment and heart- weariness and 
failure ; then, with a tread that no mor- 
tal ear could detect, He shall glide in, 
the light of whose eyes is all the light 
that heaven needs, and He will be stand- 



44 CHEER FOR LIFE'S PILGRIMAGE 

ing there amid the scenes of common 
toil. He is familiar with carpenters' 
shops. He knows well how to handle 
a boat. His delights are in the habi- 
table parts of the earth — on the flags of 
the exchange, amid the concourse of the 
market, where trades are plied and 
handicrafts wrought. The quick heart 
may still whisper gently to itself, " It is 
the Lord," and the soul shall have 
broken through the restraint of the chill 
waters of reserve, and shall be locked 
in a companionship which even the 
presence of others cannot break. 

Nor will He only come to thee amid 
the scenes of natural beauty and of daily 
toil. He will come to thee most of all 
when thou art mourning over thy failure 
in His service. Have the fish been fic- 
kle? Have thy wonted arts failed to 
beguile them? Have the weary hours 



"IT IS THE IORD" 45 

passed, thou doing all thy little best, 
without one tiny fish entering thy net? 
Does it seem to thee as if thy hand has 
lost its cunning, and dost thou think 
sadly of the disappointment which 
awaits others? This is the likeliest 
moment of all in which to come across 
Him. Jesus always comes to men who 
seem to have failed ; who have meant 
•great things, but have come short; who 
have toiled greatly, and have taken 
nothing. Such are dear to Christ. 
Nothing touches His heart like patient 
and steadfast endurance. Nothing will 
so surely bring Him within reach as 
those empty nets and light keels. Look 
out for Him as the night is passing and 
the day breaking, when strength is ex- 
pended and exhaustion is paralyzing. 
Thine heart shall awake, smitten by the 
gleam of His face, and thou shalt say 



46 CHEER FOR LIFE'S PILGRIMAGE 

softly to thyself, " This is my God. I 
have waited for Him; He is come to 
save me. This is the Lord; I will re- 
joice in His salvation. It is the Lord ! " 
Ah, soul, it may be that this story is 
not far from being realized Thy night 
is almost over. Lo! the morning 
breaks. Thy boat has nearly come to 
shore. In a little it will grate on the 
pebbles, and, as through the parting* 
mist which veils heaven thou seest a 
form waiting to welcome thee, thy heart 
will make no mistake if it softly whis- 
pers to itself, " It is the Lord;" and on 
thy emerging through the cold flood on 
the eternal shore, thou wilt see no man, 
save Jesus only, and find a fire of coals, 
and fish laid thereon, and bread; and 
"thou wilt be bidden to bring of the fish 
which thou hast caught, that thou may- 
est feed on unexpected success with 



"IT IS THE LORD" 47 

Him who says, " All Mine are Thine, 
and Thine are Mine: and My joy is 
perfected." 

When Jesus meets the disciple He has 
much to say. We need the anointed 
ear as well as the quick eye. He asks 
for love— for the noblest love of which 
the heart is capable : the love of respect, 
of devotion, of consecration, such love 
as we would give to God. He asks, that 
He may give us an opportunity of ex- 
pressing it. He asks because He loves 
to hear us express it. He asks with a 
special significance when we have acted 
in any wise inconsistently with its great 
demand. 

Hast thou not been conscious of this, 
fellow-disciple, when thou hast denied 
Him with oaths and curses, hast said 
thou didst not know Him, hast turned 
thy back on His great anguish? It 



48 CHEER FOR LIFE'S PILGRIMAGE 

was as though He says, " Is this thy 
love to thy Friend ? " Art thou speak- 
ing and acting consistently with the 
high code of love's ideal? Yet surely 
thou dost love in spite of this, Didst 
thou notice the other day, in the report 
of Nansen's explorations, that about the 
pole there is a wide, open sea, the 
depths of which are warm, though the 
surface is covered by floating ice ? Thy 
Master and mine knows well that the 
heart of a disciple may be warm, though 
on the surface may drift the ice-floes of 
denial and apparent neglect. As He 
asked of Peter, so of us, " Lovest thou 
Me?" 

Let us never dilute the attachment 
that should bind us to Him. I notice 
that He asked of Peter the great divine 
love, worthy of God, and that Peter pro- 
posed to give Him a weaker, more 



"IT IS THE LORD" 49 

sentimental affection. A second time 
Christ maintained His demand for the 
supreme love, but for a second time 
Peter proffered Him the lower. Let us 
avoid Peter's mistake, and when Jesus 
asks the best from us, let us not put 
Him off with second-best; when He 
asks the supreme, let us not give Him 
the inferior ; let us not drag Him down 
to our level, but let us confess our- 
selves willing to rise to His. Let us 
bring Him such love as we have and 
lay it at His feet, and as it fails to fill 
out the measure of His demand, entreat 
Him to take it in His hand, and for sil- 
ver to bring gold, for iron, brass, and 
for stones, jewels. 

What revelations of ourselves Jesus 
gives us when we stand together in the 
presence of our brethren and in sight of 
the heaps of fish which betoken the sue- 



50 CHEER FOR LIFE'S PILGRIMAGE 

cess that He has crowned us with! 
He shows us ourselves — nay, we see 
ourselves reflected in the light of His 
life. We stand manifested before His 
judgment-seat and discern what He has 
discerned in us. 

Has He not led thee through the 
chambers of memory, and shown thee 
how much of all thy work has emanated 
from self? He leads thee back to thy 
youth and shows how much that the 
world praised was the result of the 
forceful energy of thine eager soul — so 
much was wood, hay, and stubble, which 
thou accountedst gold, silver, and pre- 
cious stones; so much was void, which 
thou thoughtedst was Nazarite conse- 
cration ; so much was soulish and carnal 
instead of being spiritual and eternal. I 
hear Him saying to thee, as often to 
me," Thou girdedst thyself, and walkedst 



"IT IS THE LORD" 51 

whither thou wouldest." Yes, that was 
our mistake. We were always girding 
ourselves up to new resolves, endeavors, 
sacrifices, exploits. We were fond of 
taking our own way. 

" I loved the garish day; and, spite of fears, 
Pride ruled my will." 

O time, wilt thou not give us back 
those opportunities? Is the principal 
swallowed up in thy capacious maw, 
and only the poor interest of tears and 
experience left? Alas for us! So 
many steps in vain! So much walking 
to no effect! 

" Remember not past years." 

Then the Lord foreshadows the 
future : " Another shall gird thee, and 
carry thee." This might make us fear, 
if we were to interpret it as indicating 
the coming of a stranger, a detractor, or 



52 CHEER FOR LIFE'S PILGRIMAGE 

Satan. But if the " other " is a veiled 
allusion to Himself, or to the Holy 
Spirit, by whom holy men of old were 
borne along, we are content. Let it be 
even so, O Thou other Comforter! 
Come and bear us whither Thou wilt, 
though the flesh cry out, and the cross 
loom in front, and after it the grave in 
which we rest at last. Beyond it all lies 
the upper chamber, the scenes of Pen- 
tecost, the church built on the founda- 
tion of the apostles and prophets, the 
New Jerusalem, with the disciples' 
names inscribed on its stones. 

In the presence of the Lord all curi- 
osity is silenced. Dost thou look into 
His face and try to read the destiny of 
some twin soul, asking, "What shall 
this man do? " Thou wilt get no clear 
response. It may be because thy re- 
quest was prompted by some kind of 
selfish longing. It is not for thee to 



"IT IS THE LORD" 53 

know, but to be; not to compare thy 
lot with others, but to be strong and 
brave and true. All depends upon the 
Master's will, which is taken and which 
left, which tarries and which speeds 
home, which is alive until He come and 
which passes to meet Him by the 
shadowed cloisters of death. Our busi- 
ness is to follow Christ. 

Let us turn again to earth, with its 
demands and sorrows and sins, follow- 
ing Jesus as He goes about doing good, 
following Him to the ascension mount, 
following Him in thought and desire 
to His throne ; and, penetrating every 
mystery, all perplexities, each en- 
shrouding cloud, with the unfaltering 
conviction of faith let us dare to say, 
" Though I cannot read His purposes, 
or distinguish His form, or even hear 
His voice, I know it is the Lord; let 
Him do what seemeth Him good." 



IV 

OUR GENTLE SCHOOL- 
MISTRESS 

Titus ii. 10-14 

THIS paragraph may be called the 
epiphany paragraph, because twice that 
word occurs within its precincts. There 
has been an epiphany of God's grace; 
there will be an epiphany of His glory, 
and we know full well that that epiph- 
any will be ours also; for when He is 
manifested we also shall be manifested 
with Him in glory. " Epiphany " 
means manifestation, the shining forth 
54 



OUR GENTLE SCHOOLMISTRESS 55 

of the hidden sun from which the veil- 
ing cloud has been withdrawn. 

It is according to the method of the 
apostle that this marvelous paragraph, 
in which the two epiphanies meet, 
should be addressed in the first instance 
to slaves. Titus had been sent to Crete, 
that he might set in order the things 
that were wanting and appoint elders in 
every city ; he was sent to organize the 
struggling churches in all parts of that 
island. Without doubt these little 
bodies, which shone like sparks of fire 
amid the encircling gloom, had a larger 
proportion of slaves in their composition 
than of any other class. There was that 
in the gospel message which constituted 
a powerful attraction to the downtrod- 
den serfs. Moreover, they needed, more 
than any other class, the most inspiring 
teaching that the apostle could commu- 



to CHEER FOR LIFE'S PILGRIMAGE 

nicate to lift them above the degrada- 
tion and misery of their lot, and to 
enable them to feel that in the discharge 
of the most menial and distasteful work 
scope was given to them for the high 
service of God. In this connection it is 
interesting to see that the closing words 
of our paragraph are " good works." 

" Good works " is a characteristic 
phrase of this epistle. The Greek word 
is " beautiful.' ' The apostle was ex- 
tremely anxious that these poor house- 
hold slaves should abound in beautiful 
work. Titus was to be an example of 
such works (ii. 7). Those who believed 
in God were carefully to maintain " good 
works " (iii. 8). The converts were to 
learn to maintain "good works" for 
necessary uses (iii. 14). The intention 
gives character to the act, and noble or 
beautiful conceptions of Christian life 



OUR GENTLE SCHOOLMISTRESS 57 

would tinge with their own hues the 
most trivial act that called for doing. 
Therefore the apostle sets himself to 
store the hearts of the disciples with 
these lofty conceptions, that the white 
light of common life, passing through 
the stained glass of divine principles, 
may fall upon the pavement beneath in 
prismatic beauty. 

Some who read these words may be 
occupied with the commonplaces of life. 
Domestic servants, children at school, 
tradesmen, mechanics — let them not 
suppose that these spheres of duty are 
insusceptible of bearing traits of beauty. 
The heart can shed the light of its own 
ideals upon the commonest, meanest 
details until they wax lustrous. Many 
a beautiful life is being lived in top 
attics and cellar kitchens, because a 
beautiful soul is prompting every act, 



58 CHEER FOR LIFE'S PILGRIMAGE 

irradiated by the gospel and irradiat- 
ing it. 

The mantle of the incandescent light 
may serve as a beautiful illustration for 
this. Its manufacture is on this wise. 
A piece of cotton or gauze fabric is 
formed of a bell-like shape. Then for 
weeks or months its texture is saturated 
by various chemical ingredients, which 
coalesce and form into a solid structure. 
After a while, when ready for use, the 
mantle is placed over a burner and a 
light applied. Immediately the slight 
gauze is consumed, but on the surface 
of the amalgam, to which it gave its 
form, the light and heat of mingled gas 
and common air will burn for a thou- 
sand hours. Similarly, on the flimsy 
groundwork of a very trivial act the 
loftiest thoughts, ideals, and motives 
may congregate, and remain long after 



OUR GENTLE SCHOOLMISTRESS 59 

the act itself has passed, giving light 
and leading men to glorify the Father 
who is in heaven. 

Amid the multitudinous grandeur 
and interest of this paragraph, there is 
one central conception on which we may 
stay for a while, in the hope that its 
delicate beauty may exercise its witch- 
ery over our souls. The grace of God 
is compared to an instructress, a teacher 
of young children, and is depicted as 
keeping a school, within which all who 
love Christ are gathered. Hugh Miller, 
in his " Schools and Schoolmasters/* has 
spoken of the various influences which 
equipped him for his life-work ; and we 
are all pupils in many schools, and sit 
beneath the instruction of many masters. 
But amid all the influences that mold 
our lives, there is none so gentle, be- 
nignant, formative, and strong as the 



60 CHEER FOR LIFE'S PILGRIMAGE 

influence of our earliest and latest 
teacher, the grace of God. 

As I write there comes back to me a 
vision of a gentle lady to whom, as a 
little boy, I went to school. Even now 
I can see her pure and sweet face. She 
was never vexed. It was pleasant to 
learn what she taught, because of the 
charm of her personal character, which 
attracted young hearts and made them 
soft as wax to receive the die. And 
much of what I have learned in after 
life seems to have been but the devel- 
opment of what she gave in embryo. 
Many of us recall such in the sunny 
years that lie behind us in the morning 
light, and they give us a vision of what 
the grace of God must be. 

Between the two epiphanies grace 
has set up a school. She hath brought 
salvation to all men, and she instructs 



OUR GENTLE SCHOOLMISTRESS 61 

those in whose hearts her loving words 
are welcomed. Have you entered her 
school? Are you sitting on her forms? 
There are several peculiarities. 

All her teaching centers around a bi- 
ography. She teaches truth, but it is 
the truth as it is in Jesus. The way, the 
truth, and the life, of which she con- 
stantly speaks, are gathered up in His 
wonderful personality. To know Him 
is to know all that she can teach ; and 
yet, after all that she can teach, He is 
always greater and more wonderful. 

All her students learn from the same 
book. There is but one manual for 
them all. From the moment they enter 
her school-house, to the last one they 
spend there, they turn the same leaves, 
though, under her gentle teaching, these 
glow with an ever-growing meaning. 

The pupils of grace begin at the high- 



62 CHEER FOR LIFE'S PILGRIMAGE 

est forms and end with the lowest, and 
those who know most take the lowest 
places, supposing that they know noth- 
ing at all. They confess that they are 
less than the least of all saints, that they 
have not apprehended, but are labori- 
ously following on. 

There are no fees, except that every 
scholar has to bring, as they are wont still 
to do in the remoter parts of Scotland, 
each one a contribution to the common 
fire. 

There is a system of rewards and pun- 
ishments in the school of grace — prizes 
to be won, penalties to be avoided. The 
lessons are always turned back if they 
are not perfectly learned. The scholars 
are kept close, even in the lovely sum- 
mer days, if they have not completed 
their tasks; and there are times when 
the teacher has been known to use the 
taws ; but the infliction of chastisement 



OUR GENTLE SCHOOLMISTRESS 63 

has ever seemed an unwelcome task, 
only resorted to when all else had failed. 
Her voice is low and sweet, her foot- 
step noiseless, her hand soft and tender. 
Her power lies in her winsomeness, which 
attracts and charms, her patience, which 
counts no pains extravagant if only some 
young learner can be induced to apply 
himself to knowledge. Her portrait has 
been limned by an immortal hand, and 
hangs forever in the portrait gallery of 
God's Book ; but there she is also known 
as wisdom. 

" Doth not wisdom cry, 
And understanding put forth her voice? 
In the top of high places by the way, 
Where the paths meet, she standeth ; 
Beside the gates, at the entry of the city, 
At the coming in at the doors, she crieth aloud : . . . 
Receive my instruction, and not silver ; 
And knowledge rather than choice gold." 

We are taught what we are to deny. 
" Ungodliness and worldly lusts." One 
of the first lessons of children is to re- 



64 CHEER FOR LIFE'S PILGRIMAGE 

strict and limit the indulgence of each 
passing whim and fancy for the sake of 
some worthier aim. It is impossible to 
make much of the young life the gate 
of which is always on the swing and open 
to every intruder. To discriminate and 
refuse is a prerequisite to all true ad- 
vance. The child who stops to gather 
all the flowers in the spring hedgerows is 
not the one to send on urgent messages. 
Similarly, if we would have the frui- 
tion of God's glorious grace, we must 
deny all that is inconsistent with God 
and godliness, which is godlikeness. We 
must resolutely deny and die to all that 
is inconsistent with God and unlike God, 
all that would grieve the Holy Spirit, 
all that would create surprise and dislike 
in those who live on most familiar terms 
with God. Ungodliness and worldly lusts 
are closely connected. The heart of 
man, like a climbing plant, must adhere ; 



OUR GENTLE SCHOOLMISTRESS 65 

and if its support be not God, then it 
will be that system of things by which 
we are surrounded, known as the world. 
We must have one or the other, and 
these are mutually destructive. To 
have God is to be unworldly; not to 
have God is to be consumed by divers 
worldly lusts, which war against the 
soul. Therefore the apostle does well 
to class these twain ; they are two sides 
of the same bad coin, and grace teaches 
us to deny each. 

We are taught what to practise. " To 
live soberly, righteously, godly, in this 
present world. " Soberly: that is our 
behavior toward the things around us, 
whether pleasures, gains, or acquisitions 
of any kind. Righteously: that is our 
behavior toward our fellows, adopting 
as our code of dealing with them the 
standard of unvarying rectitude and 
honor. Godly: that is our behavior 



66 CHEER FOR LIFE'S PILGRIMAGE 

toward God — to love Him, resemble 
and obey Him. 

Are you ever at a stand, not knowing 
what to do for the best in respect to 
some question of practical life or honor? 
Take the hard problem into the presence 
of the grace of God ; she shall instruct 
thee. How much we miss that would 
help us in determining our course amid 
the perplexities of the present evil world ! 

We are taught what to look for, " The 
blessed hope and appearing of the glory 
of our great God and Saviour Jesus 
Christ" (R.V.). 

We are taught what to believe. That 
Jesus " gave Himself for us, that He 
might redeem us from all iniquity, and 
purify us." This was the prime end of 
our Saviour's coming into our world. 
All His work culminated in the cross; 
there He stood as our substitute, and 



OUR GENTLE SCHOOLMISTRESS 67 

bought us to be His own, and He will 
never be satisfied till we are redeemed 
from all iniquity and purified even as 
He is pure. There is no need that any 
of us should live under the power and 
tyranny of sin. We have been re- 
deemed from under its accursed yoke, 
and have only to assert our freedom on 
the warrant of God's Word. 

This is one of the favorite lessons of 
grace. As some holy woman, whose 
purity of character and dignity of mien 
secured her from molestation, might 
have gone among the slave populations 
of the Southern States after the great 
war, explaining everywhere to them the 
nature of President Lincoln's proclama- 
tion, assuring them that they were free 
and urging them to assert that freedom, 
so does this blessed teacher instruct us 
of our freedom and urge us to act on it. 



63 CHEER FOR LIFE'S PILGRIMAGE 

Lastly, we are taught what we are to 
be. " A people for His own possession " 
(R.V.). These Cretan converts were in 
many cases but too familiar with the 
thought of being owned by another — 
often by a cruel and hateful master, 
who exercised his deadly rights to the 
full. It was a mighty inspiration when 
they came to realize that they were 
much more Christ's, set apart for Him- 
self and bearing His image and super- 
scription. 

Oh, that grace may more perfectly 
explain to us the majesty of our high 
calling, and enable us to realize it! 
Let us sit at the feet of our gentle 
teacher, with humble and teachable 
hearts, to hear her lovely voice and 
weave her instructions into the warp of 
our mortal human life. 



V 

THE GOSPEL MOLD 
Romans vi. 17 

THERE is a remarkable difference 
between the Old and New Versions in 
the rendering of these words. The 
Old puts them thus : 

" But God be thanked, that ye were 
the servants of sin, but ye have obeyed 
from the heart that form of doctrine 
which was delivered you." 

The New is as follows : 

" But thanks be to God, that, whereas 
ye were bond-servants of sin, ye became 
69 



70 CHEER FOR LIFE'S PILGRIMAGE 

obedient from the heart to that pattern of 
teaching whereunto ye were delivered." 

The idea is borrowed from the smelt- 
ing-furnace, wherein the metal is 
brought to a fluid state, so that it can 
take on the shape of the mold into which 
it may be poured. Below there in the 
earth the mold or matrix lies prepared, 
the reverse of the design. At a given 
signal the contents of the furnace are 
discharged, and obey the form of the 
pattern which awaits them. Some time 
elapses, during which the metal cools. 
Then the mold is destroyed, but the 
pattern remains fixed forever on the 
substance that yielded itself to its shape. 

This process furnishes the apostle with 
a wonderful illustration of the effect 
produced upon his converts by his 
teaching. They had been the bond- 
slaves of sin, presenting their members 



THE GOSPEL MOLD 71 

to uncleanness, and to iniquity unto 
iniquity, having no fruit to show for 
years, which as they reviewed them 
gave them nothing but regret, and for 
which no compensation was possible, 
because the wages were death ; and yet 
these people had become saints, walking 
with God in purity and righteousness 
all their days, because their hearts, 
melted in penitence and contrition, had 
willingly assumed the shape of his 
teaching and so had become conformed 
to the image of the Son of God. If we 
were to obey from our hearts that same 
type of teaching, might it not bring 
about in us a similar transformation ? 

Of course we must distinguish be- 
tween the design or image to which we 
are to be conformed, and its mold or 
type in the apostolic teaching. If you 
go into some great foundry, you will 



72 CHEER FOR LIFE'S PILGRIMAGE 

not be able to discern the exquisite 
beauty of the designs in the molds, 
because these are hidden in the dark- 
ness of the ground; you must be con- 
ducted to the show-room and see the 
finished design, to produce which the 
mold has been prepared. Similarly 
the perfect beauty of the likeness of 
our Lord, to which we are one day to 
be conformed, is beheld only by those 
whose eyes are purged from all earthly 
influences and behold Him as He is. 
The mold of the apostolic teaching is all 
that we now behold ; but if we rever- 
ently and heartily accept and yield to it, we 
shall some day awake in the perfect like- 
ness of our Lord, and shall be satisfied. 
Let us comfort ourselves with this 
assurance. As He is, so we shall be. 
Can you not image the reluctance and 
questioning of the metal, when first it 



THE GOSPEL MOLD 73 

leaves the heart of the furnace and 
begins to pour along its appointed 
channel toward its destination? How 
cold it is! how dark, how perplexing! 
And when the mold is entered, and the 
dividing streams part company to take 
their several ways into the dark and 
subterranean passages, how regretfully 
they must regard their happy past! 
how they must wonder what is happen- 
ing! how prone they must be to mur- 
mur at their exclusion from light and 
air ! But if they refuse to take on the 
prepared pattern they will only expose 
themselves to added pain, because 
broken up with ruthless hammers, 
plunged again into the furnace, and 
compelled to retrace their way. Better 
far to obey immediately and gladly the 
pattern to which they have been de- 
livered. When that is achieved, and 



74 CHEER FOR LIFE'S PILGRIMAGE 

the mold is broken, and the finished 
work is brought to light, the metal will 
be satisfied. The founder also will re- 
joice with exceeding joy. 

There is a great prejudice against 
doctrinal preaching in these degenerate 
days, wherein men seek the attractive 
edifice, with little regard to foundation- 
laying. But the apostle lays great 
stress on doctrine, and says that it is as 
essential to Christlikeness as the mold 
is to the fashioning of metal into the 
predestined design. Doctrine is to the 
words of Scripture what those great 
generalizations which we know as laws 
are to the facts of nature. The comet 
obeys the attraction of the sun, the 
apple falls to the ground, the grain of 
dust follows a certain curve in its drift 
through the air, and men class them 
together under the great common law 



THE GOSPEL MOLD 75 

of gravitation; similarly we find in 
Scripture different declarations about 
God that may be classed under certain 
majestic common statements, and we 
call those statements doctrine. Doc- 
trines, therefore, are the laws of the 
spiritual realm, gathered from a com- 
parison of many scattered texts ; and as 
we ponder them reverently and prayer- 
fully we are thinking over again the deep 
thoughts of God. In meditation and obe- 
dience we surrender ourselves to them, 
or, in the words of the apostle, we are 
" delivered " unto them ; and as we obey 
them from the heart we take on their 
shape, which is the image of Jesus Christ. 

We may well ask, What is that form 
of teaching, and those doctrines, to 
which the apostle specially refers? 
Some of them are as follows : 

I. The doctrine of oneness 



76 CHEER FOR LIFE'S PILGRIMAGE 

WITH JESUS. Directly we believe, we 
are in Him as He is in us. We are 
joined to the Lord and are one spirit; 
we are members of His body, of His 
flesh, and of His bones. This is not 
only a matter of present personal ex- 
perience, but we learn that it is the 
realization of a divine conception and 
purpose. We were, indeed, chosen in 
Him before the worlds were made. We 
suddenly awake to the fact of our union 
with Jesus, but that union was present 
to the mind of God in the distant ages 
of the past. 

The Holy Spirit, in the Epistle to the 
Hebrews, founds an argument on the 
fact of Levi being in Abraham when the 
latter paid tithes to Melchizedek and 
was blessed by him. Since the less is 
blessed by the greater, he argues, the 
Levitical priesthood was clearly inferior 



THE GOSPEL MOLD 77 

to that of Melchizedek, on the model of 
which Christ's was constituted. Thus 
we may be said to have done in Jesus 
what Jesus did as our representative and 
High Priest. We are and we were in 
Him that is true. We died in Him, 
rose with Him, ascended when He left 
Olivet beneath His feet, and sat down 
with Him when He took His seat at the 
right hand of the throne of God. 

II. The doctrine of imputed 
RIGHTEOUSNESS. Men sneer at it, but 
it is unquestionably an integral part of 
the apostle's teaching, especially in 
chapters iii. and iv. of this epistle. 
More than once we are told that, as 
righteousness was reckoned to Abraham 
because he believed, so it is reckoned to 
all that believe in Him who was deliv- 
ered for our offenses and raised again for 
our justification. It were easier to take 



78 CHEER FOR LIFE'S PILGRIMAGE 

the sun out of the heavens than to take 
the doctrine of reckoned righteousness 
out of the epistles of the New Testament. 

There are two railway lines to the 
Crystal Palace — the Low and the High 
Level. If you travel by the one you must 
climb numberless stairs before you reach 
the palace, but with the other you 
have only to pass easily across the road. 
The first illustrates the efforts of men to 
obtain a righteousness of their own ; the 
second, God's method of justification. 
He not only forgives us, but by the act 
of His grace puts us on the level of the 
righteousness of Christ — His obedience 
unto death, His resolute conformity to 
the Father's will — and bids us live on that 
level by the power of the Holy Spirit. 

III. The doctrine of emancipa- 
tion FROM THE CURSE OF A BROKEN 
LAW. " Sin shall not have dominion 
over you : for ye are not under law, 



THE GOSPEL MOLD 79 

but under grace." We are under law 
when we have transgressed law. Adam 
was under the law when he had taken 
the fruit, and Joseph's brethren when 
his words aroused their consciences and 
made them remember their sin, which 
lay half hidden under the dead leaves 
of the years. The murderer is under 
the law when, fleeing from justice, he 
trembles at each snapping twig. So 
long as our sins are unconf essed, and faith 
is not exercised for the transference of 
their burden to Jesus, we are under law. 
But so soon as we believe, we enter 
upon the privileges of that union with 
Jesus which we described above. We 
see that in Him we have met the de- 
served penalty of a broken law ; that in 
Him we have exhausted the curse which 
was due to us ; that in Him we have 
met the demand that the sinner should 
die. The law has had all it can ask. 



80 CHEER FOR LIFE'S PILGRIMAGE 

and is satisfied ; we are no longer under 
its thrall or power ; we have passed into 
the realm where God's grace is supreme. 

IV. The doctrine of identifi- 
cation with Christ in resurrec- 
tion. He "raised us up together," 
" that like as Christ was raised from the 
dead through the glory of the Father, 
so we also might walk in newness of 
life." In the story of the deluge, the 
ark bore Noah and his family from the 
old world, where corruption and sin had 
reigned, to the new world of resurrec- 
tion and life as it emerged from its 
watery grave ; even so the Lord Jesus, 
the true ark of safety, has borne us, 
through His death and resurrection, into 
the world of life. It is on this thought 
that the apostle bases the appeal, " If 
then ye were raised together with Christ, 
seek the things that are above." 

This is the beginning of sanctification : 



THE GOSPEL MOLD 81 

to feel that in Jesus we no longer belong 
to the world that cast out and crucified 
Him, but to that in which He reigns for- 
evermore ; to know that His cross and 
grave stand between us and the past; 
to realize the power of His resurrection 
in its daily detachment from sin and 
attachment to God. 
V. The doctrine of Christ's 

ABSOLUTE OWNERSHIP. It was not 

enough that Christ should deliver us 
from the condemnation and penalty of 
sin ; He has also redeemed us to Him- 
self, to be a people for His own posses- 
sion, so that we should become His 
bond-servants and slaves. Ah, what a 
claim is this, that He should be able to 
put His hand on each of our members 
and say, " This is Mine ; I purchased it 
for Myself, and to use it at any prompt- 
ing but Mine is sacrilege. " 

You cannot overcome sin by a nega- 



82 CHEER FOR LIFE'S PILGRIMAGE 

tion ; you must have something positive 
with which to combat its solicitations. 
Sin asks that our members should be 
presented to it as weapons for its un- 
holy use, but it cannot produce a single 
sufficient argument or ground for its 
claims. Then Christ comes and claims 
that we should place our members at 
His disposal, and produces the Father's 
warrant that all His blood-bought ones 
should be considered His in a unique 
and special sense : " Thine they were, 
and Thou gavest them Me." As He 
produces this warrant, there is no excuse 
for dallying or delay ; we gladly present 
our members as servants to righteous- 
ness unto sanctification, and in doing so 
we find the best and all-sufficient answer 
to the eager biddings of the flesh : " We 
are Thine, O blessed Redeemer; Thou 
only hast a right to us, for Thou hast 



THE GOSPEL MOLD 83 

redeemed us to God by Thy blood. 
Other lords besides Thee have had do- 
minion over us, but henceforth by Thee 
only will we make mention of Thy name.' ' 
Such are some of the doctrines in- 
cluded in that gospel teaching into 
which, as into a mold, the apostle wished 
his converts to be delivered. Let us 
meditate on them till they become the 
habitual furniture of our souls; let us 
ask the Holy Spirit to work through 
them with living energy, making them 
operative and mighty in our daily ex- 
perience ; let us dare to take our stand 
upon them as certain facts and realities : 
then, like these converts at Rome, we 
shall find ourselves freed from sin, and, 
being emancipated from its intolerable 
thraldom, we shall become the happy ser- 
vants of God, having our fruit unto sancti- 
fication, and the end everlasting life. 



VI 

SCRIPTURES AND POWER 

Mark xii. 24 

To be told that they did not know 
the Scriptures nor the power of God, 
and that this was the cause of their 
error, was sufficiently startling to the 
Sadducees who came to the Master with 
their question. They were not prepared 
to be taught anything that they had not 
already perceived to be in the ancient 
Hebrew Scriptures, much less to have it 
taught by this Nazarene, who had not 
been reared in the schools of the rabbis. 
84 



SCRIPTURES AND POWER 85 

It was a new experience to be told that 
they erred greatly because they knew 
not the Scriptures nor the power of God. 
Three things are noticeable: (i) Our 
Lord did not appeal, as Plato might have 
done, to arguments for the other life, 
based on the nature of the soul, or to 
the processes of nature ; but to the 
Scriptures, which to Him were the ulti- 
mate court of appeal. In His conflict 
with Satan and in His teachings, His 
supreme appeal was always to the Word 
of God. (2) That He classes the five 
books of Moses under one heading and 
speaks of " the book of Moses " — from 
which we may infer His judgment that 
it was the product of one mind, as dis- 
tinguished from the assertions of modern 
critics that it is a composite production, 
in which several hands may be detected. 
(3) That He discovers an argument for 



SG CHEER FOR LIFE'S PILGRIMAGE 

the future life in the present tense which 
Jehovah used in His first conference with 
Moses. We should never have thought 
of the fathomless depth that underlies 
those simple words, " I AM," unless He 
had taken us to the edge and bidden us 
look into the sheer immensity, blue with 
distance. It was enough that, two hun- 
dred and fifty or three hundred years 
after the death of the youngest patriarch, 
God spoke of Himself as being the God 
of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob ; and Jesus 
founded on that affirmation the argument 
that these souls must all be in existence 
somewhere, since God could not be God 
of the dead, but of the living. Is He 
the God of Jacob two and a half centu- 
ries after he has been laid to sleep in 
Machpelah's ancient cave, then Jacob 
must be alive. What marvelous depths 
lie under some of the simplest texts! 
We pass and repass over them day by 






SCRIPTURES AND POWER 87 

day, all unknowing. But we can guess 
from this instance what mysteries of won- 
der and beauty Jesus may have unfolded 
to His disciples during the forty days. 

What is there in Scripture that in- 
vested it, in Christ's judgment, with such 
a unique authority? What are the 
Scriptures? It would be difficult to 
find a reply more satisfactory and 
scriptural than that given by the late 
Dr. Gordon, of Boston : " Literature is 
the letter ; Scripture is the letter inspired 
by the Spirit." What Jesus said of the 
new birth is equally applicable to the 
doctrine of inspiration : " That which is 
born of the flesh is flesh, and that which 
is born of the Spirit is spirit/' Educate, 
develop, and refine the natural man to 
the highest possible point ; yet he is not 
a spiritual man till, through the new 
birth, the Holy Ghost renews and in- 
dwells him. So of literature : however 



88 CHEER FOR LIFE'S PILGRIMAGE 

elevated its tone, however lofty its 
thought, it is not Scripture. Scripture 
is literature indwelt by the Spirit of 
God. The absence of the Holy Ghost 
from any writing constitutes the impass- 
able gulf between it and Scripture. In 
fine, the one fact which makes the Word 
of God a unique book, standing apart in 
solitary separateness from other writ- 
ings, is that which also parts the man of 
God from common men — the indwelling 
of the Holy Ghost. 

This is a true witness, and, because 
of this characteristic, we must say not 
simply that Scripture was, but that it is 
inspired by the Spirit of God. The bush 
burns with fire. The voice of God 
speaks. The Word gives living force to 
the words. The words that Scripture 
utters are spirit and life. As the sun 
burns in our grates, having been trans- 



SCRIPTURES AND POWER 89 

mitted from unknown millenniums 
through the coal, which has been de- 
scribed as " fossilized sunlight/' so the 
Holy Spirit is present in the Scripture, 
as in no other writing whatsoever. 
Christ's perception of this made the 
Scriptures His constant meditation and 
final court of appeal. 

It should be noticed also that our 
Lord bases His argument on the very 
words of Jehovah. It was not enough 
that the words contained the Word, but 
that they were the very Word of God. 
In the same way the Apostle argues for 
the unity of the spiritual children of 
Abraham when he lays emphasis on seed 
as contrasted with seeds, the difference 
of an s establishing his point. To quote 
again the writer alluded to above, 
" Words determine the size and shape 
of ideas. As exactly as the coin an- 



90 CHEER FOR LIFE'S PILGRIMAGE 

swers to the die in which it is struck 
does the thought answer to the word by 
which it is uttered. Alter the language,' 
and you by so much alter the thought/ ' 

The words, therefore, he argues, are 
all-important in enabling us to compre- 
hend God's exact meaning. In point 
of fact, the higher critics themselves 
bear witness to this by the minute at- 
tention which they expend on the text 
of Scripture. It greatly confirms the 
argument to notice the stress which 
Christ lays on the very words of God. 
Had He said, " I was," it might have 
been seriously doubted whether the 
saints were yet alive. All such questions 
are put to rest by the majestic " I AM." 

It has been truly said that every 
revelation of Himself that God makes to 
man involves a revelation of what man 
is in his nature and needs. When we 



SCRIPTURES AND POWER 91 

learn that Christ is made to us right- 
eousness, we know that we are unright- 
eous. That He is our Paschal Lamb 
teaches us that we are in danger of the 
destroying angel. The name Comforter, 
given to the Holy Ghost, assures us of 
our need of one to stand beside us. 
When, therefore, God describes Himself 
as God to men who had passed from this 
earth for centuries, it was conclusive evi- 
dence that they were living somewhere, 
within some warm inclosure of His most 
blessed and happy-making presence. 

There is, therefore, misconception 
when we speak of the dead, as though 
death were an abiding-place, a perma- 
nent condition. It is a passage, not an 
abiding-place; an act, not a state; a 
shadow flung for a moment by the por- 
tal through which we enter the other 
world, where the chalice of life brims 



92 CHEER FOR LIFE'S PILGRIMAGE 

over. Instead, therefore, of speaking 
of the dead, let us speak of those who 
have died. Up to a certain moment, 
which was the crisis of a physical 
change, they lived with us, but the 
moment after they had passed that 
change they were as certainly and as 
intensely living on the other side. 
Death is birth into the fuller life. The 
signal-box is vacant, but the operator is 
elsewhere, carrying out his code. 

Considerations like these will greatly 
mitigate our sorrow for those who are 
asleep. Ours is the world of the dy- 
ing and dead, the valley over which 
death spreads its huge, bat-like wings. 
Yonder is the world of the living. They 
live with God, in God, on God, unto 
God. They drink of the river of water 
of life near its source. " Sons of God," 
" sons of the resurrection," " equal unto 



SCRIPTURES AND POWER 93 

the angels/' " unable to die any more " 
— such are some of the terms applied to 
the saints who live on the other side of 
death by the Master of life. " All live 
unto God." 

The place of their abode is the chosen 
house of Him who, though present in 
space as power, is specially manifested 
there as love. The restriction placed on 
the evolution of the spirit's life in this 
world, like an iron fence, will there be 
removed. With God is the fountain of 
light ; in His light they will see light ; in 
His presence they will find fullness of 
joy ; at His right hand pleasures for- 
evermore. What the tropics are to the 
shriveled flowers of our northern cli- 
mates, that heaven will be to the puny 
spirit-life of our present experience. 

The fire that burned in the bush has 
generally been taken to mean the tribu- 



94 CHEER FOR LIFE'S PILGRIMAGE 

lations through which the church passes 
in this world, and which fail to consume 
her fabric or rob her of one twig or leaf 
that belongs to her organically. But 
surely it is truer to the symbolic teach- 
ing of Scripture to regard it as a sym- 
bol of the presence of God, who is as 
fire in the purity and spirituality of His 
nature, who needs no fuel to sustain His 
eternal being, and who is willing to stoop 
to the meanest and most despised of His 
creatures in tender pitifulness. Abide 
in Him, and let Him abide in thee ; let 
Him settle down on thee, enveloping 
thee in the luminous garments of His 
holy presence, so that thou be inacces- 
sible to death. All that corrupts and 
disintegrates shall be rendered power- 
less to harm thee. Thou shalt abide in 
the secret place of the Most High, and 
hide under the shadow of the Almighty. 
Whatever God has promised in the 






SCRIPTURES AND POWER 95 

Scripture He is prepared to make good 
by His power. " Ye know not the 
Scriptures, nor the power of God." It 
is necessary to know each. Abraham 
believed that what God had promised 
He was able also to perform. He 
looked from the promise to the Promiser, 
from the world to the eternal power of 
the Godhead, to which nothing was im- 
possible, not even hard. 

This must be our attitude also. In 
the proper balancing of these two — in 
the study of the Scriptures, on the one 
hand, and in the adoring contemplation 
of God's power, on the other — we shall 
find our best preservative against the 
errors of our age, and may await the time 
when God will vindicate Himself, fulfilling 
every promise and prediction of Scripture 
with the might of His stretched-out arm. 

Do you ask how the dead are raised 
up, and with what body they come? 



96 CHEER FOR LIFE'S PILGRIMAGE 

Do you fear that somehow in the crowd 
you may miss elect and beloved spirits? 
Do you question fearfully the ability of 
such a nature as yours to find consum- 
mation and bliss amid such new and 
wonderful surroundings? Be still and 
wait ; these fears would be annulled if the 
veil were torn from our eyes and we knew 
the Scriptures and the power of God. 

Not the Scriptures without the power, 
or you arrive at the dry-as-dust pedan- 
tries of scribe and Pharisee. Not the 
power without the Scriptures, or you 
drift into the ineptitudes of mysticism 
and fanaticism. Always combine the 
Scriptures and the power of God, and is 
not the commanding proof of the unique 
position of the Scriptures as the inspired 
Word of God, that through them, as 
through no other book whatsoever, the 
divine power travels and works ? 



VII 
STILLED AND QUIETED 

Psalm cxxxi. 2 

This psalm is perhaps the most ex- 
quisite expression of the Christ-spirit 
before the incarnation. There is noth- 
ing to match it, save the words which 
tell that the heart of the Redeemer is 
meek and lowly, and that the childlike 
and humble are the special subjects of 
the kingdom which He is setting up 
among men. 

It is one of the shortest of the psalms, 
because the humble and contrite spirit 
is content to fill but a little space, and 
97 



98 CHEER FOR LIFE'S PILGRIMAGE 

yet, for all its brevity, it has probably 
exerted as much influence on men as its 
companion Psalm cxix. The one is as 
the silvery treble pipe, the other as the 
deep bass in the organ of Scripture, to 
which the Psalter may be very properly 
likened. 

The psalm is also unadorned. Others 
of its companions bear traces of splendid 
conception and elaboration; they come 
forth bedecked with the jewels of ima- 
ginative poetry ; but there is here no at- 
tempt at anything more than a statement 
of the placid experience of the inner 
life, which was once rocked and overcast 
with storms, but is now pellucid and 
tranquil as a mountain tarn in summer. 

It is said to be " A Song of Ascents " 
(R.V.). At first sight it might seem 
out of harmony with the rest of these 
glorious pilgrim hymns, well suited to 
those who are climbing to the city of 



STILLED AND QULETED 99 

God. It resembles rather Bunyan's 
shepherd boy, singing to himself in the 
valley, than the stalwart pilgrims breast- 
ing the steep. So meditative and lowly, 
there is little of the exulting strain to 
match the soaring soul. But it is better 
to climb by stooping, to ascend by our de- 
scents, to mount up with wings because 
we have learned to lie among the pots. 
It is noticeable that this psalm of the 
child-heart follows that in which the 
psalmist claims forgiveness with the sob 
of penitential contrition. Perhaps we 
must appropriate the former before we 
can properly appreciate the latter. It 
is very strange, but true, that only 
through the gate of true soul-sorrow for 
sin can we pass into complete likeness 
to the little child who is as yet innocent 
of conscious sin. It is as if there is a 
kinship between the forgiven prodigal 

and the sweet child that has not gone 
i 
L. Di 



100 CHEER FOR LIFE'S PILGRIMAGE 

beyond the precincts of the Father's 
home. Thus, in heaven, saints like 
Augustine will be perfectly at home with 
the hundred and forty-four thousand 
who have never defiled their garments. 
The psalm is attributed to David, and 
there is no reason to doubt his author- 
ship. But this adds new interest to it, 
for it is clear that it was not natural to 
that lion-heart to write like this. From 
his earliest maturity he had been a man 
of war, trained in the camp and court, 
where force and pride hold sway ; com- 
pelled to force his way to the throne 
through intrigue and calumny, too 
stained with blood to be permitted to 
build the temple of peace — his was not 
the hand that we should have naturally 
credited with this tender and delicate 
sonnet. It must have come to him 
when some of the rougher experiences 
of his life had passed and he had felt 
the necessity of curbing his strong, im- 



STILLED AND QUIETED 101 

petuous spirit. If this be the case there 
is some hope that others of us, whose 
life has been stormy, and whose natural 
bent is in the direction of pride and self- 
sufficiency, may be led through similar 
exercises of soul to say, as he did, " The 
days in which my heart was haughty 
and mine eyes lofty are past. Not 
now do I exercise myself in great mat- 
ters, or in things too wonderful for me. 
I have learned to still and quiet my soul 
like a weanling upon its mother's knee." 
I. The sentiments of this psalm 

ARE NOT NATURALLY OURS. The 
heart of man is full of pride, which shows 
itself in many ways. 

There is the Pharaoh phase, in which 
we proudly refuse to renounce, at the 
bidding of God, that which we claim to 
have acquired by our own ingenuity or 
capacity. " Who is the Lord, that I 
should obey Him to let Israel go?" 

There is the Naaman phase, which 



102 CHEER FOR LIFE'S PILGRIMAGE 

starts back in a rage from some simple 
ordinance to which the Lord claims obe- 
dience. 

There is the Haman phase, that can- 
not endure the refusal of a Mordecai to 
stand up or move for him. " All this 
availeth me nothing, so long as I see Mor- 
decai the Jew sitting at the king's gate." 

There is the Hezekiah phase, in which 
we show all the treasures of our home in 
the spirit of ostentation and vain display. 

There is the Pilate phase, which re- 
fuses the remonstrances of the Christ 
that stands to be judged. 

Proud of our religious observances, of 
our charities and self-denials, of the 
positions we hold in the church, of our 
very humility and courtesies to the poor ; 
impatient of the least slight ; annoyed if 
not treated with sufficient or customary 
respect ; quick to take offense ; cherish- 
ing feelings of dislike to those who out- 



STILLED AND QUIETED 103 

strip us; bent on edging our way to 
front positions ; priding ourselves on the 
successes we have achieved, the talents 
with which we are gifted, the services 
we have rendered to the cause of Christ 
— few of us can say, " My heart is not 
haughty, nor mine eyes lofty." % 

What a contrast between us, dwelling 
amid the luxuries and superfluities of 
modern life, pampered and well provided 
with everything that delights the flesh, 
and a man like John Woolman, one of 
the rarest souls God ever made, who 
spent his time in walking from one 
Friends* meeting to another, habited in 
the simplest garb, faring on the plainest 
food, taking the rebuffs of the wealthy 
and arrogant without surprise, and con- 
tent to be counted the offscouring of all 
if only he might raise his protest on be- 
half of the suffering and downtrodden ! 

II. The need of string dealing 



104 CHEER FOR LIFE'S PILGRIMAGE 

WITH OURSELVES. David evidently 
had passed through a crisis at some 
period of his life. He seems to have 
taken himself seriously in hand. Up to 
a certain point the impulses and desires 
of his nature had reigned over him, 
bringing him into captivity; then he 
resolved that their sway should be at 
an end, and, in the power of the divine 
Spirit, quieted and stilled his soul. His 
illustrations are borrowed from the storm 
and the home. 

To the storm he goes for his first 
image. His inner life had been swept 
by strong billows, driven across it by the 
winds of passionate desire. We know 
something of these billows, too. We 
also are swept by these winds : long- 
ings for the gratification of sense, the 
cries of our appetites for forbidden food, 
cravings for notice, notoriety, reputation, 
advancement, the imperious insistence 



STILLED AND QUIETED 105 

that our personality should be taken ac- 
count of, our gift and position reckoned 
on, our services valued. When our de- 
mands in these directions have been met 
with disdain or refusal, we have simply 
retired into the shadow, to eat out our 
hearts in chagrin and rage. Those stand- 
ing around us may have seen a calm 
mantling our face, but it has been a very 
superficial covering for the fierce storm 
which has beaten vehemently in the heart. 
Under such circumstances David 
seems to have arisen, and, in the energy 
of the divine Spirit, to have stood on 
the shore of his tempest-swept soul, bid- 
ding the hurricane "be still." You and 
I have tried to do as much, but have 
failed as egregiously as Canute to stay 
by his word the incoming waters of the 
sea. Ah! we need a stronger power 
than human to hush the inward storm. 
Christ alone can put the curb upon our 



106 CHEER FOR LIFE'S PILGRIMAGE 

seething passion or inordinate desire. 
He waits our request before He can un- 
dertake to quell the whirlwind and quiet 
the wave. If you cannot say, " Surely 
/ have stilled and quieted my soul 
through faith/' you can say, " Jesus my 
Saviour has done it for me, and He keeps 
me still and quiet, though the storms 
may pass over the sky." 

The other illustration is borrowed 
from the home. The babe has been 
nourished at its mother's breast. Al- 
most instinctively it has reached out its 
hands for the supply through which pure 
love has passed to its soul as well as 
nourishment to its body; but now the 
time has arrived for it to be weaned, 
that it may be able to take stronger food 
to build up its enlarging frame. The 
breast must be withdrawn and the little 
one accustomed to other sources of sup- 
ply. It is a bitter ordeal, and the sor- 



STILLED AND QUIETED 107 

rowful babe vents its complaint with 
much wailing and piteous outcry. It 
sobs as though its very heart must break ; 
it beats with its tiny hands against the 
loving mother- face that bends over it; 
it threatens to be inconsolable. At last, 
beaten and exhausted, it accepts its pri- 
vation, falls back upon its mother's arm, 
and no longer adds the violence of its 
strife to the sense of its loss. It suffers 
one evil instead of two. It acquiesces in 
the loving choice of another. It passes 
through a necessary privation to a life 
which is infinitely preferable, and which 
it would choose, did it understand. 

David must have seen this process re- 
peated many a time, and one day it came 
upon him, as a flash of inspired insight, 
that he, too, had been clinging to the 
breasts of human consolation, that he 
had been nourishing his life from sources 
which, however pleasant, were not com- 



108 CHEER FOR LIFE'S PILGRIMAGE 

patible with the highest development. 
To relinquish them meant sorrow that 
was hard to the flesh, but he saw that it 
was useless to spend his life in vain re- 
grets. It was better a thousand times 
to accept the divine arrangements and 
allow himself to fall back upon the strong 
and tender arms of that God in whom 
motherhood and fatherhood blend. 

The weaning is God's part. At the 
destined moment — 'the moment in which 
our highest interests demand His inter- 
positions — God will not hesitate to wean 
us from sources of supply which He per- 
mitted to us in the time of our compara- 
tive immaturity. He loves us too well 
to perpetuate ministries of creature help 
and comfort which are interfering with 
our attaining to the full stature of Christ. 
When the time comes for us to be weaned 
God will wean us, but everything de- 
pends upon the way in which we take 
His discipline. We may at once acqui- 



STILLED AND QUIETED 109 

esce, and in this case we pass through 
the transition stage at as little cost of 
suffering as may be. On the other 
hand, we may sedulously and petulantly 
resist. Then will ensue weeks and per- 
haps months of repining, murmuring, 
and bitter complaint, that will expend 
and wear us out. And all the while we 
shall be missing the deepest lesson that 
God can teach — a lesson of loving, trust- 
ful acquiescence in His will ; for, in ad- 
dition to the advantage of passing from 
a lower to a higher stage of Christian 
experience, this weaning is intended to 
bring out a more perfect trust. We thus 
doubly thwart the divine intention when 
we murmur and complain. 

After a while, exhausted, beaten, 
strengthless, helpless, we give up our 
insistence for our own way, our rebellion 
against His. We give up the conflict. 
We yield our will to His, and fall back 
on the everlasting arms of Him who 



110 CHEER FOR LIFE'S PILGRIMAGE 

comforts us as a mother her first-born. 
How much better it would have been to 
have done this at the first, before we 
had expended ourselves so largely and 
had given observers the impression that 
the ways of God with His children were 
severe! As a weaned child after its 
struggles lies upon its mother's knee, 
and presently comes again into loving 
accord with her gentle face tenderly 
regarding it, so the soul finds its tran- 
quillity in resignation to the will of God, 
which is our peace. 

There is a certain definitehess in the 
act which resigns the entire conduct of 
life to the Almighty. At a given mo- 
ment of time a certain attitude is taken 
up, which dates a new era, and there- 
after care is exercised not to tamper with 
imperious desires which it has cost so 
much to quell. I greatly admire that 
entry in the diary of the late General 



STILLED AND QUIETED 111 

Gordon : " March 8, 1882. I have come 
to a conclusion; may God give me 
strength to keep it ! Stop all the news- 
papers. It is no use mincing the matter ; 
as the disease is dire, so also must be 
the remedy. These are the words 
which have done this : ' My son, unglue 
thyself from the world and its vanities. 
Put on the Lord Jesus Christ ; find Him 
thy wisdom, righteousness, redemption ; 
thy riches, thy strength, thy glory.'" 
III. The difference between 

STOICISM AND TRUE RELIGION. A 
stoic like Marcus Aurelius might have 
written the first two verses of this psalm 
and there stopped short. He could not 
have said, " Hope thou in the Lord from 
henceforth, even forevermore." For 
him there might be the negative, the 
refusal to be perturbed by vain desire 
and intolerable care ; but there was no 
such knowledge of God, in His ability to 



112 CHEER FOR LIFE'S PILGRIMAGE 

fill the void of the soul, as to enable 
him to turn thitherward in hope. The 
stoic reckons himself dead to the thou- 
sand misfortunes of life; he has no 
knowledge of the thousand compensa- 
tions of God. He shuts all the doors 
and windows of the lower ranges of the 
heart, but fails to open the upper to the 
blue sky and the sunlit air. Be sure, if 
you are weaned from the breast of 
human comfort, you turn with invincible 
comfort to the heart of God. Do not 
simply deny yourself, but receive from 
Christ all, and more than all, that you 
forego. Forsake what you will, but 
appropriate spiritual equivalents for all 
that you renounce. Hope in God, for 
the heart of a man has never yet con- 
ceived of all that He can become to those 
who give all up for Him. All human 
love and comfort are not comparable 
to the love and beauty of the Re- 
deemer. 



STILLED AND QUIETED 113 

Hope in God ; from henceforth believe 
in His mother-love and that He is doing 
the best possible for each of us. Never 
go back from this moment. Stand to it, 
whatever betides, that God has done, is 
doing, will do, His very best. Refuse to 
discuss the matter with yourself or with 
any other. Let this be as absolutely 
fixed as your trust in the constancy of 
your closest friend. 

Hope in God forevermore. As the 
years pass they will but deepen and 
intensify the sense of His trustworthi- 
ness. Time can never utter all the 
depths that await us in God : the tender- 
ness of His sympathy, the closeness of 
His heart against ours, the delicacy with 
which His hand wipes away our tears. 
Thus, as the outer man decays, the in- 
ward man will be renewed day by day, 
and affliction will seem light and mo- 
mentary compared with the far more 
exceeding and eternal weight of glory. 



VIII 
A NEW COVENANT 

Luke xxii. 20 

If you have lost your way in an un- 
known country at night, and come upon 
a railway track, you know that if you 
follow it far enough in one direction or 
the other you will arrive at a brilliantly 
lighted station, in which you can obtain 
shelter and refreshment. So as you 
come upon the observance of the Lord's 
Supper — which, like a narrow track, 
threads the ages — you can pass from it 
backward or forward. If you go back 
114 



A NEW COVENANT 115 

you come inevitably on the night in 
which Christ was betrayed; if you go 
forward you are led to the marriage 
supper of the Lamb, with which the 
present dispensation will close. 

The Lord's Supper commemorates 
three distinct facts about our Lord : He 
died; He lives; He will come. He 
died, and evidently, in His judgment, 
His death was the most important item 
in His career. Forget all else, He seems 
to say, — My teaching, My example, My 
mighty works, — but keep ever fresh be- 
fore your minds and the world the 
memory of My death. He lives, else 
how should the apostles have thought of 
commemorating that which had filled 
their loving hearts with distress ? They 
only dared to think about His death 
because they knew that He who died in 
weakness was living through the power 



116 CHEER FOR LIFE'S PILGRIMAGE 

of God. And He will come. This has 
inspired the church as she has sat down 
at the table, expecting that at any mo- 
ment He may glide in, and visibly take 
His place, and transform anticipation to 
welcome. 

But in addition to these three facts, 
the Lord's Supper commemorates the 
setting up of a distinct covenant be- 
tween the infinite God and those who 
are represented in the man Christ Jesus. 
And while the eating of the bread sets 
forth the necessity of our daily feeding 
on Christ, the drinking of the cup has 
another phase of meaning, and points to 
our participation in the blessings of the 
covenant, which is ordered in all things 
and sure, and which is all our salvation, 
all our desire. "This," said He, "is 
My blood of the covenant, which is shed 
for many unto remission of sins." 



A NEW COVENANT 117 

I. Some explanatory words 

ABOUT THE COVENANT. In the 
Authorized Version, " covenant " and 
" testament " are used interchangeably 
in such passages as Galatians iii. and 
Hebrews ix., which discuss this sublime 
theme. This is a matter of regret, as it 
obscures the deep connection of thought 
which connects them. It is better to 
think and speak of the " covenant/' by 
the provisions of which God has bound 
Himself. "Covenant" means more 
even than " agreement/' In the eye of 
a court of law, the latter may be set 
aside, but never the former. 

A covenant gives a solid basis of peace. 
A parchment deed may show marks of 
great age, the writing difficult to deci- 
pher, the wording obscure. The child 
intent on play, the young life yearning 
for love, may turn from it with languid 



118 CHEER FOR LIFE'S PILGRIMAGE 

interest ; but if it were missing the fab- 
ric of that happy home life might in- 
stantly collapse, as a building from 
which the foundation had been with- 
drawn. Security of tenure rests abso- 
lutely on the covenants, properly drawn 
out and witnessed, that repose in the 
darkness and neglect of their deed- 
boxes. So, also, our peace of heart and 
repose of soul, at the present moment 
and in all the ages of the future, depend 
absolutely on that covenant which the 
Father has entered into with the Son as 
our representative and Mediator. 

Our Lord speaks of a NEW covenant. 
Let us turn for a moment to the old : 
" And Moses came and told the people 
all the words of the Lord, and all the 
judgments : and all the people answered 
with one voice, . . . All the words 
which the Lord hath spoken will we 



A NEW COVENANT 119 

do, . . . and be obedient " (Exod. 
xxiv. 3, 7). " The words of the Lord, 
and the judgments " evidently refer to 
the foregoing chapters and to the whole 
body of Mosaic legislation so far as it 
was then revealed. The key-note was 
the reiterated words, " This do, and ye 
shall live, " and the response, " We will 
do." 

With this let us contrast the provisions 
of the new covenant : " This is the cov- 
enant that I will make with them after 
those days, saith the Lord; I will put 
My laws on their heart, and upon their 
mind also will I write them; and their 
sins and their iniquities will I remember 
no more" (Heb. viii. 10, 12; x. 16, 17). 

Obviously the introduction of this new 
covenant involves the disannulling of the 
old. " In that He saith, A new cove- 
nant, He hath made the first old. That 



120 CHEER FOR LIFE'S PILGRIMAGE 

which is becoming old and waxeth aged 
is nigh unto vanishing away." In point 
of fact, as the apostle shows in the Epis- 
tle to the Galatians, the covenant of 
Sinai was introduced as a parenthesis 
into the covenant of grace, which was 
first revealed in God's promise to Abra- 
ham when he was yet a Gentile, not 
having undergone the special rite that 
became the distinctive badge of the 
Jew. " A covenant," he says, " con- 
firmed beforehand by God, the law, 
which came four hundred and thirty 
years after, doth not disannul, so as to 
make the promise of none effect " (Gal. 
iii. 17). If the law was not added till 
after the covenant of grace had been re- 
vealed, it could be set aside when it had 
fulfilled its temporary purpose ; and, in 
contrast with its disannulling, the ancient 
covenant of grace would stand forth as 



A NEW COVENANT 121 

new. Its key-note throughout is " I 
will." We are no longer concerned with 
the " we will " of poor human resolution, 
so soon broken and dissipated, but are 
encouraged by the eightfold assurance 
of the "I will" of God. 

This covenant is entered into with 
Christ. " The fathers continued not in 
My covenant "; such is God's bitter 
complaint (Heb. viii. 9). The people's 
repeated assurances of obedience were 
hardly uttered before they were falsified 
by the incident of the golden calf. It 
is the universal experience. " I approve 
the better, I do the worse," said the cul- 
tured heathen. " The good I would, I 
do not; the evil I would not, I do," said 
the Christian apostle. 

If, then, the observance of the provi- 
sions of the new covenant had been left 
to the will and power of men, however 



122 CHEER FOR LIFE'S PILGRIMAGE 

earnest and devoted, they must have 
met with the same fate. It is not in 
man that walketh to maintain his steps 
in the holy requirements of God's law. 
Therefore, in His love and mercy, the 
Father entered into covenant with Jesus, 
who stood as sponsor and surety for all 
who should after believe in His name. 

This was foreshadowed in the original 
promise to Abraham : " Now to Abra- 
ham were the promises spoken, and to his 
seedy Not then was it made clear what 
was involved in this reference to his seed. 

It might have seemed to refer only to 
Isaac and his posterity. But centuries 
after the Holy Ghost adds the explana- 
tion, and the apostle says, " which is 
Christ " (Gal. iii. 16). In other words, 
Christ is the true heir of the promises of 
God's covenant with Abraham, not for 
Himself alone, but as the representative 



A NEW COVENANT 123 

of all those who are one with Him in 
His mystical body. " As the body is 
one, and hath many members, ... so 
also is Christ." That is, Christ stands 
for all the members of His body; and 
when He is said to be the seed of Abra- 
ham, with whom the promises are made, 
it is intended that all who believe in Him 
should see themselves included (i Cor. 
xii. 12). 

The fulfilment of the covenant does 
not, therefore, depend on what we may 
do or not do, because Jesus, as our rep- 
resentative, has done all that needed to 
be done, and, as our surety, has under- 
taken that the ordinance of the law 
should be fulfilled in us, who walk not 
after the flesh, but after the spirit. 

This covenant has been solemnly rati- 
fied. For the ratification of the first 
Moses took the blood of the calves and 



124 CHEER FOR LIFE'S PILGRIMAGE 

the goats, and sprinkled both the book 
itself and all the people, saying, " This 
is the blood of the covenant which God 
commanded to you-ward" (Heb. ix. 19). 
For the ratification of the second Jesus 
shed His own blood. Until death su- 
pervenes a deed of covenant has no 
special force : " A testament is of force 
where there hath been death : for doth 
it ever avail while he that made it liv- 
eth?" (verse 17, R.V.). Therefore the 
new covenant, having been established 
by the most solemn sanctions, is of ever- 
lasting validity. You remember the 
phrase of the Holy Spirit — " the blood 
of the everlasting covenant." It dates 
from eternity, and will last to eternity. 
God hath sworn by Himself, and He 
cannot change. Earth and heaven may 
pass away, but through the dissolution 
of worlds the word of God, by which 



A NEW COVENANT 125 

He hath bound Himself, must endure. 
We, therefore, who have fled for refuge to 
this sure and steadfast hope, may have 
strong encouragement (Heb. vi. 1 7-20). 
II. The contents of the cov- 
enant. It is not possible for wife, child, 
or relative to open the will, and for the 
first time scan its provisions, without a 
keen intensity of emotion. Nor should 
it be otherwise as we consider what our 
God has provided for us in Christ. 

( 1 ) The obedience of love, " I will put 
My laws into their heart." We shall no 
longer obey because we must, but be- 
cause we choose ; we shall delight to do 
His will ; ours the conformity of friend 
to friend, when love fuses heart to heart, 
rather than the servility of the slave, 
who knoweth not what his master doeth. 

(2) The supply of all need. " I will 
be to them a God " ; i.e., that in His all- 



126 CHEER FOR LIFE'S PILGRIMAGE 

sufficiency we should have everything 
that we need for life and godliness, so 
as to be complete in Him. 

(3) Direct knowledge. " All shall 
know Me." The interposition of the 
human teacher shall be needless, because 
the soul shall have direct access to the 
divine. 

(4) Entire forgiveness. " Their sins 
and iniquities will I remember no more." 
We too seldom realize what perfect and 
complete forgiveness appertains to the 
believer in Jesus. If such a one should 
approach God with a recapitulation and 
confession of the sins of bygone days, 
pleading piteously for mercy, for mercy 
and absolution, it is as though God 
should say, " My child, I do not know 
what you refer to; I find no record 
against you in the book of My remem- 
brance. I have blotted as a cloud your 



A NEW COVENANT 127 

transgressions, and as a thick cloud your 
sins ; they are gone as a wreath of smoke 
into the air, as a stone into the ocean 
deep." 

What is there that we can require for 
this life or the next which is not con- 
tained in these four clauses? I know 
not which to choose, each is so requisite 
to entire blessedness, and at different 
periods of our experience we need now 
one and now the other; but if there is 
one star that shines more brilliantly than 
the rest, it is that blessed assurance that 
God will be a God to us — all that we 
might expect of God, and more ; all that 
the nature which He has given requires ; 
all that is requisite to be the comple- 
ment (i.e., the completement) of our 
almost infinite need. 

" I must have all things, and abound, 
While God is God to me." 



128 CHEER FOR LIFE'S PILGRIMAGE 

III. The sign and seal of the 
covenant. " The cup of the new cov- 
enant in My blood." 

The significance of the cup is due to 
our realizing sense that it is placed in 
the hand of the Lord Himself and that 
we take it from Him. The table at 
which He reclined has been elongated 
down the centuries, and He as really 
passes the cup to the communicant as 
when He handed it to the beloved dis- 
ciple leaning on His breast. Ask the 
Holy Spirit to make Jesus real whenso- 
ever thou partakest of the Holy Supper, 
withdrawing every other presence, that 
His may rise, in all its sweetness and 
majesty, before thy spirit's vision. 

Whenever, therefore, the cup is passed 
to us, it is as though Jesus said, " All 
the provision of the new covenant is for 
thee; as this cup, which thou seest now, 



A NEW COVENANT 129 

comes to thee, so the blessings of which 
it is the sign and pledge, but which thou 
canst not see, are within thy reach.' ' 
The rainbow was the outward sign of 
the promise spoken at the assuaging of 
the deluge ; the Passover was the token 
that God had redeemed His people for 
His peculiar possession ; and the cup is 
the appointed sign and memorial of all 
that is meant by the new covenant, with 
its fourfold provision. With what new 
and blessed meaning is the cup invested ! 
Every time it touches my hand Jesus 
shall say, " In Me this covenant is for 
thee." 

Each time, also, that we partake of 
the cup, if we are full of faith and of the 
Holy Spirit, we in effect prefer our claim 
to all that the covenant offers. We sip 
the wine where the lips of Jesus have 
touched the cup before us, and we avow 



130 CHEER FOR LIFE'S PILGRIMAGE 

our desire for fellowship with Him in 
the fullness of God. May we humbly 
and reverently realize that all is ours, 
and then appropriate all those benefits 
of His passion that He has won. 

Thank Him as you avail yourselves 
of them. Words can never tell how 
much is due to Him. But do not dis- 
honor Him by pleading that He should 
do what is covenanted, as though He 
were unwilling or reluctant, or had to 
begin to meet your need. All has been 
done, all has been borne and suffered, 
all has been acquired, and all is now 
provided and secured ; draw near with 
comfort and joy, and avail yourselves by 
faith of all your blessed inheritance ; live 
in your home, possess your possessions, 
dismiss the brooding of anxious care — 
all things are yours, and ye are Christ's, 
and Christ is God's. 



IX 

CHRIST AND PAIN 
Rev. xxi. 4 

THERE is much in this Apocalypse 
that we cannot understand, — the sap- 
phire throne, the glassy sea, the de- 
scending city of God, the bottomless pit, 
— but amid these sublime and dazzling 
hieroglyphs there are sweet breaks of 
melody, like verdant grassy plains amid 
the splintered grandeur of the higher 
Alps. Here, at least, we can feast our 
weary souls. 

Such is this verse, musical in its 

131 



132 CHEER FOR LIFE'S PILGRIMAGE 

rhythm, pathetic in its reminiscence of 
the anguish which is at an end forever, 
content to leave the positive marvels of 
heaven untold if only it may assure us 
that at least the saddest elements in our 
earthly life shall be forever banished. 

What a marvelous completeness there 
is in the Scripture record! It rounds 
the cycle of truth, opening with a para- 
dise in which there was neither mourn- 
ing, nor crying, nor travail ; narrating, in 
pages stained with blood and tears, man's 
bitter heritage, self-caused, of weariness 
and woe; and ending with the new 
heavens and earth, on the air of which 
no stifled groan or sigh or dirge can 
ever break. 

The pain of misunderstanding will be 
no more, since we shall see eye to eye 
and know as we are known. 

The pain of suspense will be no more, 



CHRIST AND PAIN 133 

because we shall behold the purposes of 
God in their ultimate and beneficent 
outworking. 

The pain of waning love will be no 
more, because in that happy land, as the 
children sing, love is kept by a Father's 
hand and cannot die. 

The pain of bereavement will be no 
more, because death cannot intrude into 
that glad city of life. No cypress-tree 
grows there ; no mourning garb is ever 
seen in those streets; no funeral cor- 
tege ever winds its slow length along 
them. 

But it is to physical pain that these 
words seem primarily to refer. 

I. The mystery of pain. How 
can we account for it? That it is an 
intruder seems clear from the fact that 
travail was so distinctly inserted as one 
of the items in the divine sentence on 



134 CHEER FOR LIFE'S PILGRIMAGE 

the fallen pair. Besides, pain is one 
with death, and we know that death did 
not pass over to the human family until 
sin had opened the door for it to enter. 
The pain of the lower order of creation 
does not now enter our discussion, since 
that is so evidently connected with the 
fall of Satan, who made them subject to 
vanity, though not willingly. Perhaps, 
too, the coming fall of man cast its dark 
shadows before. 

Our Lord gives three clues to the 
solution of this mystery, any one of 
which leads us away into the infinite, as 
paths that go up into the moors and lose 
themselves. 

( i ) He attributed some pain to the direct 
agency of Satan. " Satan," said He, 
"hath bound this woman, lo, these 
eighteen years." And this conception 
of the direct agency of Satan in the per- 



CHRIST AND PAIN 135 

secution and pains of men is constantly 
referred to in other passages of Scripture. 

When the apostle's visit to his con- 
verts was delayed beyond his expecta- 
tion, he did not attribute it to the divine 
will, but said deliberately, " Satan hin- 
dered us." 

When he was suffering from some 
heavy affliction which maimed his 
strength and limited his usefulness, he 
did not scruple to speak of it as a mes- 
senger of Satan, sent to buffet him. 

And in the epistles to the churches, 
indited by the Lord through the Spirit 
to the beloved apostle, they are distinctly 
warned that Satan would cast some of 
them into prison. 

It may be that certain forms of illness 
and suffering, especially epilepsy and 
mania, are the direct result of malevo- 
lent and malignant spirits ; and if so, the 



136 CHEER FOR LIFE'S PILGRIMAGE 

unhappy patients should be specially 
assisted by the prayer and sympathy of 
their brethren, that they may be recov- 
ered out of the snares of the devil, who 
have been taken captive by him at his 
will. 

(2) He attributed some pain to wrong- 
doing. " Go," said He, to the paralytic 
who had lain for thirty-eight years on 
the brink of Bethesda's pool, " sin no 
more, lest a worse thing come upon 
thee." We may infer from this sentence 
that the pain of those thirty-eight years 
had been caused by some direct violation 
of the moral law, and that it might re- 
turn, and worse, if he trifled with the 
prohibitions of conscience and Sinai. 

How much pain there is in the world 
which need not have been there except 
for man's wilful transgressions ! As we 
sow to the flesh, we painfully reap cor- 



CHRIST AND PAIN 137 

ruption. The moment's unholy gratifi- 
cation is fearfully avenged by months 
and years of anguish. 

" Pain follows wrong 
As the echo song — 
On, on, on." 

On the whole, this is beneficently 
conceived, and the certainty of the 
operation of this great law has repeat- 
edly stayed the sinner's steps when on 
the verge of disobedience. It is well 
that the fire burns, or we should be 
throwing ourselves into the flames un- 
suspecting. 

(3) Our Lord attributed some pain to 
high moral considerations. When talk- 
ing of the sickness of Lazarus He said : 
" It is not unto death, but for the glory 
of God, that the Son of God should be 
glorified thereby ;" as though to suggest 
that some suffering at least cannot be 



138 CHEER FOR LIFE'S PILGRIMAGE 

included in either of the categories al- 
ready named, but is permitted as a plat- 
form on which the power and love of 
Jesus may be revealed to men. What 
an honor is conferred on such — ah, 
happy souls! — subjected to pain for the 
revelation of the Master's nature, certain 
of being sustained by divine consolations 
during the ordeal and of being infinitely 
rewarded when it is done. 

Again, when healing the man born 
blind, He denied the suggestion of His 
apostles that the pain was due to prena- 
tal sin, and affirmed that his blindness 
had been permitted that the works of 
God might be made manifest in him. 

These words may have a wider scope 
than for any individual case. They may 
cast a light on the permission of moral 
evil, whether in the forms of sin or pain. 
It did not, and could not, originate in 



CHRIST AND PAIN 139 

God. An enemy wrought this, and 
sowed tares in God's harvest-field. And 
God permitted it because He knew that 
evil would furnish a dark background 
for the exhibition of His glorious attri- 
butes ; that the pain and anguish would 
finally be immeasurably outstripped by 
the preponderating blessing ; that where 
sin abounded His grace should much 
more abound; that, as sin reigned in 
death, so might grace reign through 
righteousness unto eternal life. 

II. Our Saviour's attitude to- 
ward PAIN. Always counting it as an 
intruder, throughout His public ministry 
He bore Himself as its uncompromising 
antagonist. He healed the sick and cast 
out devils. Many a time He would 
enter a village or town and heal every' 
sufferer before nightfall, so that, for a 
marvel, there was no sleepless couch, 



140 CHEER FOR LIFE'S PILGRIMAGE 

no anxious watcher, no moan of pain, 
throughout the whole population. 

Three w r ords may sum up His attitude 
during His earthly life and His attitude 
to-day : 

(i) Patience. "The kingdom and 
patience which are in Jesus." He could 
not have suffered pain for Himself, be- 
cause His body was absolutely pure and 
holy. Even in the grave it did not see 
corruption. But He suffered untold 
pain as our Brother, who fulfilled the 
prophecy of Isaiah, and Himself took 
our infirmities and bare our sicknesses. 
He could not have delivered men if He 
had not taken their maladies to Himself, 
though how, we know not. Surely 
something more is meant than keen 
sympathy. 

But amid all His sufferings and sor- 
rows He bore Himself with unflinching 



CHRIST AND PAIN 141 

fortitude, with immeasurable patience : 
led as a lamb to die, drinking the cup 
submissively which the Father placed in 
His hands, silent under the scourging of 
His foes. 

(2) Sympathy. " He sighed " ; " He 
sighed deeply " ; " He groaned in 
spirit." When He saw the sisters and 
mourners bathed in tears, He wept. 

Such fellow-feeling is His still. He is 
touched with the feeling of our infirmi- 
ties and with the pressure of our pains. 

(3) Ministry. The Venus of Milo 
looks benignantly down on the upturned 
faces of her admirers, but she has no 
arms — powerless to help the generations 
as they pass before her. But Christ 
sits at the right hand of power, rides 
forth in the chariots of salvation, and 
stretches forth His hand to heal and save. 

Probably it is only thus that it is pos- 



142 CHEER FOR LIFE'S PILGRIMAGE 

sible for Him to be blessed, as He 
bends, with sleepless care, over our 
world. A woman may be very deli- 
cately strung, unable to look on wounds 
and acute pain ; but directly it is her child 
that is suffering, and something has to 
be done for it, she forgets her former 
fears and finds blessedness amid her 
awful anxiety by practical ministrations. 
So, probably, our Saviour is blessed, 
because He never stays His right hand, 
but exerts all power to mitigate the rule 
of sin and rescue the suffering children 
of men. 

III. The destined end. "There 
shall be no more pain." Its causes will 
have been ended. Satan will be bound, 
consigned to the abyss, and no longer 
able to afflict. 

There will be no more death, or 
Hades, for they will have been cast into 



CHRIST AND PAIN 143 

the lake of fire. There will be no more 
sea, and so separation and loneliness will 
have been done away. 

The body of this humiliation will be 
changed into the likeness of the body 
of His glory, and the inhabitant of that 
world shall no more say, " I am sick." 

We shall no more recall the pain of 
our present condition than we can re- 
member the aches and pains of child- 
hood. The recollection of pain is always 
short-lived, but there it shall be as 
utterly obliterated as the traces of foot- 
steps on the sands by the incoming tide, 
or as the murmur of shells when the 
ocean waves thunder along the beach. 
The statues shall be complete, and the 
almighty Sculptor shall cast away, 
never to take up again, the chisel with 
which He has achieved some of His 
noblest designs. 



X 

GOOD FOR A TIME 

Hosea IV. 4 

Imagine yourself in a tropical coun- 
try, dependent for its fertility on the 
periodic rains. For months there has 
been neither rain nor dew: the brooks 
are beds of stones, the pools caked and 
dry ; the rivers have dwindled to silver 
streaks; the land burns as a furnace; 
vegetation is scorched ; the husbandman 
cannot drive his plow through the ob- 
durate earth ; and the cattle, with blood- 
3hot eyes, stand on the hilltops and 
144 



GOOD FOR A TIME 145 

quaff the hot air in the extremity of 
their fever. But one morning there are 
symptoms of a change. A little cloud 
is seen by hundreds of eyes, like a 
wreath of gauze on the face of the in- 
tense blue of the sky. " See the cloud 
— rain is coming! ,J The cry goes 
through the land. But as men watch, 
it vanishes. It is a morning cloud, that 
passes away. Such are many of our 
resolutions in their slightness and eva- 
nescence. 

Hosea lived on the eve of the disso- 
lution of the northern kingdom, and 
graphically describes the awful deterio- 
ration of the people. His pages give a 
graphic picture of the desperate wicked- 
ness that prevailed among all classes. 
There was no truth, nor mercy, nor 
knowledge of God in the land; naught 
but swearing, and breaking faith, and 



146 CHEER FOR LIFE'S PILGRIMAGE 

killing, and stealing, and committing 
adultery; blood touched blood. Gross 
impurity and intemperance had taken 
away their heart. 

The people sacrificed upon the tops 
of the mountains and burned incense 
upon the hills, under oaks and poplars 
and terebinths, because their shadow 
was dense enough to hide the shame of 
their impurities. Therefore God with- 
drew Himself from among them and 
gave them up to suffer the results of 
their sins. He became to Ephraim as a 
moth, and to Judah as rottenness, and 
threatened to tear and carry them off, as 
a lion pounces on a shepherdless flock, 
harries the sheep, and bears off the lambs 
to his den. " I will go," said the al- 
mighty Redeemer and lover of Israel, 
"and return to My place, till they ac- 
knowledge their offense, and seek My 



GOOD FOR A TIME 147 

face : in their affliction they will seek Me 
early." 

On hearing this there is an immediate 
revulsion of feeling. " Come," the peo- 
ple cry, " and let us return unto the 
Lord: for He hath torn, and He will 
heal us ; He hath smitten, and He will 
bind us up. . . . Let us know, let us 
follow on to know the Lord." But as 
soon as their words are reported the Al- 
mighty seems to say : " I have heard all 
this many times before ; from the days 
of the judges, when My people have 
been stricken for their rebellions, they 
have turned to Me with promises of 
amendment, which have never been 
realized. They have always suffered the 
same fate. Their goodness has been 
like the morning cloud, and as the dew 
that goeth early away. O Ephraim, 
what shall I do unto thee? O Judah, 



148 CHEER FOR LIFE'S PILGRIMAGE 

what shall I do unto thee ? Something 
more must be done, but what? It is 
useless to look to resolutions and prom- 
ises of amendment as the foundation of 
the new life. I must go further, and 
lay My hand to establish something 
that shall become the steadfast founda- 
tion of a lasting edifice. ,, 

The divine question, "What shall I 
do unto thee ? " is answered in the proc- 
lamation of the new covenant. " What 
shall I do ? I will give My Son. What 
shall I do? I will give My Spirit. 
What shall I do? I will come and in- 
dwell. What shall I do ? I will expend 
blood for their cleansing, and fire for 
their sanctification. What shall I do? 
I will make a new covenant with the 
house of Israel and with the house of 
Judah, not according to the covenant 
that I made with their fathers, in the day 



GOOD FOR A TIME 149 

that I took them by the hand to bring 
them forth out of the land of Egypt ; for 
they continued not in My covenant, and 
I regarded them not. But this is the 
covenant that I will make with the 
house of Israel after those days : I will 
put my laws into their mind, and on their 
heart also will I write them." This is 
the difference between the old covenant, 
under which God's people lived in the 
days of Hosea, and the new covenant, 
which was introduced to take its place 
and remedy its confessed failure. For 
if that first covenant had been faultless, 
then would no place have been sought 
for a second. But there was a disan- 
nulling of the former because of its 
weakness and unprofitableness, for it 
made nothing perfect. 

The difference between the first 
covenant and the second may be there- 



150 CHEER FOR LIFE'S PILGRIMAGE 

fore stated in a word. Under the first, 
Israel, after the flesh, sought to realize 
its fair ideals and fulfil its resolutions in 
the energy of its own will and power; 
under the second, God enters the heart, 
in Jesus and through the Holy Spirit, to 
effect within us His own ideal, and to 
make permanently our own those vi- 
sions of beauty that, like the New Jeru- 
salem, come down to us from God out 
of heaven. It is because we choose to 
live under the old, rather than to exer- 
cise our privileges under the new, that 
our goodness, like Israel's, has resembled 
the morning cloud and the dew that 
goeth early away. 

We hear an appeal for some dire need, 
and beneath the burning eloquence of 
the speaker we resolve to give, say, five 
pounds, for the relief of the sufferers, it 
may be in Armenia or in the drought- 



GOOD FOR A TIME 151 

stricken provinces of northern India. 
But when his voice has ceased we think 
that half the amount will suffice, while 
on the following morning we deem 
half a guinea ample, even if we have 
not altogether receded from our re- 
solve. 

We hear a sermon on the nobility and 
beauty of a life of self-sacrifice ; we are 
told that the fullest field for its mani- 
festation is in the home ; we see how we 
may acquire this noble quality amid the 
daily attrition and fret of the home cir- 
cle, and are quite anxious to get back to 
commence ; but when we find ourselves 
face to face with the hard facts, the harsh 
reality, the thorns and briers, our resolu- 
tion fails us, and we are as crabbed, awk- 
ward, and morose as ever; it seems 
impossible to break through the reign 
of frost and be genial, tender, and self- 



152 CHEER FOR LIFE'S PILGRIMAGE 

forgetting. Again our goodness has 
become as the morning cloud. 

We hear an address on the need for 
more prayer, more Bible study. The 
still hour with God is so presented as to 
enthrall our interest and enchain our 
desires. We hear the Master saying, 
" Can ye not watch with Me one hour ? " 
and ardently respond, "With all our 
hearts/ ' On the following morning we 
spring from our couch an hour earlier 
than our wont; the next morning we 
manage only half an hour; and within 
a day or two we are just as sluggish and 
careless as ever. Our goodness is like 
the morning cloud. 

What can God do with such charac- 
ters ? It is impossible to build temples 
on shifting quicksands or drive nails into 
rotten wood. Unless something more 
is done, all life will be consumed in 
making resolutions and breaking them ; 



GOOD FOR A TIME 153 

in repenting and relapsing; in dashing 
merrily down the slope, and in labori- 
ously dragging the sled up to the sum- 
mit again. Therefore God comes to us 
with the new covenant, sealed with the 
precious blood of Jesus, and made effec- 
tive by the inworking of the Holy Spirit. 
And each time we raise the cup of the 
Holy Supper to our lips we ostensibly 
claim that He will fulfil all its provisions 
within us and do according to His most 
gracious engagements — writing His laws 
on mind and heart, and causing them to 
appear in character and life. We seem 
to say, " O blood of Christ, be thou the 
impassable barrier between me and my 
past life of failure and disappointment; 
and do Thou, O blessed Spirit, work in 
me mightily to will and do of God's good 
pleasure, that I may work out what Thou 
dost work in." 

It is impossible to exaggerate, O soul 



154 CHEER FOR LIFE'S PILGRIMAGE 

of man, what God is prepared to do for 
thee, so that thy goodness should never 
again be as the morning cloud. Dare to 
believe in His all-sufficiency, and, having 
faith in the operation of that mighty 
power which raised Jesus from the dead, 
dare once more to resolve. Though thou 
hast resolved and failed a thousand 
times, dare to resolve again, and intrust 
the keeping of thy resolves to thy faith- 
ful Redeemer, believing that He will ac- 
complish in thee and for thee all that 
He has taught thee to desire. 

Our resolutions may then take three 
directions, as suggested in this paragraph. 

First, let us resolve to return. 
"Come, let us return unto the Lord." 
Back from the far country to the old 
place in the Father's home. 

Second, let us resolve to know God. 
" And let us know." 



GOOD FOR A TIME 155 

Third, let us resolve to follow on to 
know the Lord, with unswerving pa- 
tience, till we know even as we are 
known. 

The inception of these resolutions on 
our part is very grateful to God. His 
nature longs for our love and trust as 
the parched soil does for rain. We do 
not sufficiently apprehend how necessary 
we are to God, how dear, or how longed 
for. The first symptom of increasing 
earnestness is welcomed by Him, as the 
parched vegetation thankfully welcomes 
the sound of the abundance of rain, or 
drinks in the first few pattering drops of 
descending moisture. 

He will do more than welcome : He 
will protect, maintain, and quicken into 
stronger and healthier growth. The 
Holy Spirit will take charge of the feebly 
smoking flax and fan its flame into a fire. 



156 CHEER FOR LIFE'S PILGRIMAGE 

He which hath begun the good work 
will complete it. There shall be a per- 
fecting of the tender purpose, a blos- 
soming of the fragile bud. Is not this 
included in that nourishing and cherish- 
ing which is predicted of the Lord's 
body, and which might be applied to a 
nurse's or mother's solicitude for some 
flickering baby life, that keeps standing 
still and asking whether or not it should 
continue, or whether it would not be 
better to give up the fight altogether? 
" After two days will He revive us, on 
the third day He will raise us up, and 
we shall live before Him." The power 
that raised Jesus from the dead on the 
third day waits to do as much for us, 
not spasmodically and intermittently, but 
regularly, certainly, ceaselessly, until it 
seats us, beyond all principality and 
power, beside His own steadfast throne. 



GOOD FOR A TIME 157 

Let us, then, gird up the loins of our 
mind, and resolve again in the resurrec- 
tion grace of the Holy Spirit. Let us 
dare to register vows of absolute conse- 
cration and surrender, laying aside every 
weight and the sin that doth so easily 
beset, and let us follow on with patience 
to know the Lord ; and as we do so we 
shall find ourselves strengthened with 
all might, according to His glorious 
power, unto all patience and long-suffer- 
ing. We cannot expect to snatch so 
great an attainment with one swift rush ; 
we must follow on, placing it before us 
as an acquisition which, at all cost and 
by any sacrifice, must be ours. And it 
shall be ours ; for, though His going 
forth is as gentle and gradual as the morn- 
ing, it is as sure. As an old saint said, 
with a touch of a heartbreak in her tone, 
" The Almighty is tedious, but He's sure. " 



158 CHEER FOR LIFE'S PILGRIMAGE 

Let us take the grand old rendering, 
" His going forth is prepared as the 
morning. ,, The spot of the earth's sur- 
face on which you live has taken leave 
of the sunshine, and is plunging ever 
farther and farther into the blackness of 
darkness ; as the hour of midnight strikes 
you are as far removed as possible from 
the last gleams of the evening glow ; but 
you are hastening toward the dawn, 
which awaits you in solemn pomp. Let 
the lonely night-watcher understand 
that at each swing of the pendulum he is 
hurrying to meet the smile of the morn 
which awaits his coming, in preparation 
of golden clouds and bars of amber light 
and delicate tints of green and azure. 

The morning is prepared; it waits ; it 
has been decked by the hand of the 
Creator to comfort and bless the return- 
ing hilltops and seas and flowers and 



GOOD FOR A TIME 159 

homes of men. Dare to believe that so 
God is waiting for you — only follow on. 
Do not be dismayed by the darkness — 
follow on. Do not give up heart and 
hope because the delay is so long — fol- 
low on. Do not be wanting through 
lightness or fickleness — follow on. God 
will break on thee in all the loveliness of 
His being; thou shalt see His glory in 
the face of Jesus ; the dawn of a more 
tender and intimate fellowship is nigh ; 
only follow on till the voice of the herald 
is heard crying, " Arise, shine ; thy light 
is come, and the glory of the Lord is 
risen upon thee." 



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